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I IFE OF 

FATHER Hy\SKINS 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

£>X ^ 7QS 
Chap. Copyright So. 

Shelf..il.S.3\\'-' 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 




FATHER HASKINS, 

Founder of the House of the Angel Guardian. 



THE LIKE 



OF 



FATHER HASKINS 



BV 



A FRIEND OF THE HOUSE 
OF THE ANGEL GUARDIAN 




1899: 

ANGEL GUARDIAN PRESS, 

Boston, Mass. 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED 

Library of Congret% 
Office cf tht 

m 1 2 1900 

Register of Copyrlghttt 



51025 

Copyright, 1S99. 

BY THE 

BROTHERS OF CHARITY, 

(House of the Angel Guardian.) 

Boston, Mass. 



•£C0ND copy« 






TO THE 

jfrten^5 an& JBcnetactors 

OF THE 
HOUSE OF THE ANGEL GUARDIAN 

THIS BOOK 

PUBLISHED AS A TRIBUTE TO THE 

REVERED MEMORY 

OF 

FATHER IIASKINS, 

is respectfully dedicated 

By the Author. 



Portland, Nov. 21, 1899. 
My Dear Brother Jude: — 

I am more than delighted to learn that you 
have undertaken to publish a brief life of the revered 
founder of your Institution. Nothing could give 
me greater pleasure than to add, by any word of 
mine, to the veneration, the gratitude and the af- 
fection which you, your Brothers in Religion, and 
the boys under their care, should feel for the Rever- 
end George Foxcroft Haskins. 

My acquaintance and friendship with him com- 
menced in 1854. I met him in Paris when he, as 
the companion of the late l)ishop of Boston, John B. 
Fitzpatrick, was returning from Rome, where he 
had been attending to some diocesan business, and 
was renewing acquaintance with former friends in 
the French capital. 

Father Haskms took me with him to visit the 
Institutions for boys in that great city. It was a 
new experience to me, and, at the same time, it gave 
me an opportunity of knowing how deeply and 
tenderly Father Haskins felt for such children, es- 
pecially boys as had been deprived of the care and 
example of good parents. 

I can never forget the indignation with which he 
literally shook the dust from his feet as we came 
out from a great Institution, where 500 boys are 
kept in solitary confinement until they reach the age 
of manhood. Perhaps I should say fiearly solitary^ 
because the boys are allowed to see one teacher 



at a time, or a Chaplain at the altar, but never 
are they allowed to see the face nor hear the voice 
of another boy, whether in doors or in the court or 
play-yard. 

On arriving in Boston, I was placed for nearly 
six months, as an assistant to Father Haskins. 
This was another great opportunity for a better 
knowledge of his admirable character. His devotion 
to his people of the North End was evident in every 
word and action of his priestly life. Even then, he 
had begun, in a house near his own, to take in 
and educate poor and homeless boys. It was 
pleasant to hear him declaring that it was a funda- 
mental rule of his institution that no homeless boys 
should ever be turned away from its door. 

I need not continue to give my reminiscences of 
Father Haskins, either in the conduct of his parish, 
or in the gradual development of the Institution. 
You have, no doubt, related it in the book, and, 
doubtless, much better than I could tell it. 

I was his companion on that last and memorable 
journey undertaken by Father Haskins to visit 
similar Institutions in Ireland, England and Belgium, 
(France being closed to strangers by the terrible 
events of the Commune in 1871), and to find a 
Brotherhood that should continue the work after his 
death. For, even then, Father Haskins was 
conscious that the hand of death was stretched over 
him. 

More than once, on that journey, both of us feared 
that he would never be able to reach his native 
country again. This journey, however, undertaken 
by the direction of our present venerable Arch- 
bishop, resulted most happily for the Institution. 
For you and your community, my dear Brother 



Jude, are, in consequence, the continuators of the 
admirable work which Father Haskins had so 
well commenced. 

I thank God most devoutly for all I was privileged 
to know of him. I thank God for all that he was 
able to do, both as a pastor and as a founder of a^ 
noble and useful work. I am one of the few, very few, 
who can be counted as having shared in his intimate 
friendship, and it is a pleasure for me, at this day, 
to say that, under an exterior which to many ap- 
peared reserved and cold, was the heart of the true 
priest, the steadfast friend and most compassionate 
man. 

I trust that the Lord has long since granted him 
the rest and joy for which we all hope and strive ; 
but I regret that his last resting-place on earth, 
by no will of his own, but by family complications, 
was not among the boys whom be loved so well, and 
for whom his labors, his sacrifices, and his life were 
most cheerfully eiven. 

I send you, my dear brother, these hasty 
reflections of, Yours sincerely in Chj-ist, 

JAMES AUG. HEALY. 
Bishop of Portland. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

A Few Introductory Remarks. The Comprehensive- 
ness of Catholic Charity — Cardinal Gibbons De- 
clares it Extends from the Cradle to the Grave — 
The Motives Which Prompted This Life of 
Father Haskins ...... i7--t 

CHAPTER II. 

Father Haskins' Birth and Boyhood — His Parents. 
Both Members of the Episcopalian Church — 
Their Place of Residence — His School Days and 
Teachers . 22-27 

CHAPTER III. 

At Harvard College — His Academic Graduation — A 
Theological Student — His Episcopalian Ministry 
— His First Steps Toward Catholicism and Rome. -8-45 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Convert Crosses the Ocean — His Visit to Rome 
— His Acquaintance with Archbishop Bay ley — 
Marie Alphonse Ratisbonne — A Seminarian at St. 
Sulpice in Paris — Archbishop Williams One of 
His Fellow Students — His Ordination and Return 
to Boston ........ 46-55 



XIV CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 

Father Haskins' Priesthood — He Goes to Father Wiley 
at Providence — Short Sketch of That Zealous 
Priest — Back Again at Boston — Appointed Pastor 
of St. John's Church — He Purchases the New 
North Church — St. Stephen's Congregation . 56-67 

CHAPTER VI. 

Father Haskins at the North End — Pastor of St. John's 
— He Contemplates the Foundation of a Boys' 
Home — Pitiable Condition of Catholic Waifs — 
Religious Influences — Captain Shurtleff' s Action 
—His Death— The Home in Moon St. Court . 68-82 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Move to Roxbury — The Site of the Home and its 
Purchase — Plans Made for the Building — Laying 
the Corner Stone — The Dedication of the New 
House of the Angel Guardian — Father Haskins' 
Joy — A Noble and Grand Structure . . . 83-98 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Father Haskins Goes to Europe Again in Quest of 
Brothers — His Stay in Ireland and His Welcome 
There — He Crosses to Liverpool and London 
Where He Meets Old Friends— His Visit to Bel- 
gium and His Efforts in Behalf of the House of 
the Angel Guardian There . . . . . 99-ioS 

CHAPTER IX. 

Father Haskins Prepares to Return to Boston — The 
Franco-Prussian War Prevents Him From Visit- 
ing Paris — Back in Ireland Again — He Spends a 
Few Days in Ulster— His Hurry to get Back to His 
Beloved Institution-^-His Last Annual Report to - 
the Trustees of the House of the Angel Guardian. 109-121 



CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER X. 



The Closing Years of Father Haskins' Lite — His 
Manifold Occupations — His Fondness of Study 
and His Literary Abilities — His Death — His Ob- 
sequies and the Tributes to His Worth and 
Work . . . . . . .122-136 

CHAPTER XL 

After the Founder's Deatii — The Coming of the 
Brothers of Charity — Brother Justinian the First 
Superior — Brothers Wenceslaus, Eusebius and 
Joseph — Brother Jude. the Present Head of the 
Home — The Industrial School and its Large 
Success. ........ i37-i>2 




FIRST HOUSE OF THE ANQEL GUARDIAN, BOSTON. 



CHAPTER I. 

A FEW INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. THE COMPREHENSIVE- 
NESS OF CATHOLIC CHARITY CARDINAL (ilBBONS DE- 
CLARES IT EXTENDS FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE — 
THE MOTIVES WHICH PROMPTED THIS LIFE OF FATHER 
HASKINS. 

IT is one of the innumerable glories of the Catholic 
priesthood that from time to time there appear 
in its ranks men who, without neglecting any of the 
manifold duties which devolve upon them in the 
special field of labor assigned to them, but, on the 
contrary, discharging their obligations with marked 
zeal and fidelity, are, by the noble impulses of their 
souls, moved to undertake works of broader than 
parochial character, and who devote themselves to 
the task of caring for, and ameliorating the hapless 
condition of some needy or neglected portion of 
the general community. The Catholic Church has 
never, from its first ages, it may be said, lacked 
priestly humanitarians of this character. The 
pages of her history are luminous with the recitals 
of the noble lives which such priests led, and of the 
great benefits which resulted from their intelligent 
and self-sacrificing toils. There. is not a country in 
all Catholic Christendom where may not be seen the 

2 



I 8 LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 

monuments, more lasting than brass, of these priestly 
philanthropists in the form of the beneficent in- 
stitutions which carry on the movements that they 
inaugurated in behalf of the poor, the fatherless, the 
neglected, the destitute or the feeble-minded child, 
or, it may be, in the interests of decrepit and ab- 
andoned old age. The Church would not be true to 
the spirit of her Divine Founder did she not produce 
periodically priests of this stamp ; men, w^ho, being 
in truth, what the Apostle calls them, other Christs, 
imitate their great Master in the consuming love 
which He bore the poor and the helpless, and share 
the large love which He entertained and exhibited 
toward little children. During the years that the 
nascent Church v^as being so cruelly persecuted by 
the Roman Emperors, it was not possible for her 
charitably disposed bishops and priests to undertake 
the erection of any buildings for the care of the 
classes of society mentioned above. But as soon as 
peace was in a measure established in Christendom, 
we find such institutions coming into existence 
wherever the influence of the Church was exerted. 
By the middle of the fourth century there was built 
a public hospital for the sick atSebaste, in Armenia. 
St. Basil the Great, erected an hospital of such 
immense extent that it sheltered a community so 
numerous that it was compared to a town. St. 
Chrysostom devoted all the spare revenues of his 
church to charitable undertakings in behalf of the 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. I9 

poor and needy. St. Gregory Nanzianzen was re- 
nowned because of his tender solicitude for the 
helpless and infirm. Nor was it alone in the East 
that the early Church, in these primitive days, showed 
herself the mother of such priests and prelates. 
In the West, also, the spirit of her Divine Founder 
prompted her ministers to provide institutions for the 
infirm, the feeble, the illiterate, the poor, the needy, 
of all ages and conditions of life. It would require 
pages to ennumerate even by name the saintly men 
and women, priests, brothers, sisters, and laymen and 
women, who considered it an honor and glory to 
imitate Christ in His tender regard for the poor, 
His great love for children, and who devoted their 
whole lives to the welfare of needy humanity. St. 
Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Camillus of Lellis, St. 
Vincent of Paul, St. Peter Claver, Dom Bosco, 
Frederick Ozanam, Father Damien — these are but 
types of countless others who, inspired by Christian 
charity and animated by Catholic zeal, have labored 
for their fellow beings in this line of work or that; 
and who deemed no toil too menial or too exacting 
when it was a question of saving an immortal soul 
or rescuing an image of God from want or misery, 
ignorance or sin. And, then, there are the numer- 
ous religious orders of the Church, founded with the 
special view of performing just these sorts of chari- 
table work. Their number is almost legion, and 
who can fitly recite their accomplishments or tell 



20 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

their praises! There is no phase of human want, be 
that need what it may, for which the Church, through 
these orders of her inspiration and begetting, does 
not provide. Her charity is all comprehensive, and 
well does Cardinal Gibbons say of her, her orders 
and her institutions, that as she "provides homes 
for those yet on the threshold of life, so, too, 
does she secure retreats for those on the threshold of 
death. She has asylums in which the aged, men 
and women, find at one and the same time a refuge 
in their old age from the storms of life, and a no- 
vitiate to prepare them for eternity. Thus from the 
cradle to the grave she is a nursing mother. She rocks 
her children in the cradle of infancy, and she soothes 
them to rest on the couch of death." 

In the subjoined pages of this volume an endeavor 
is made to put before the public more fully than has 
yet been done in print the magnanimous character of 
a priest of our own days, who, mindful of the Divine 
Master's great love for children, and animated by 
true Catholic zeal and charity, undertook and suc- 
cessfully and solidly inaugurated, here in Boston, a 
benevolent institution, whose need when it was 
founded was imperatively urgent — and has not by 
any means lessened since and within whose shelter- 
ing walls thousands upon thousands of Catholic boys, 
who, in very many cases, would otherwise have been 
ilost in every sense of the term, have been saved and 
.educated and taught trades which enabled them to 



LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 21 

earn an honorable livelihood in after years, when 
they went forth from the House of the Angel Guar- 
dian, to take their places in the world and show 
themselves as they have uniformly done, good 
citizens of their respective communities, and loyal 
and dutiful sons of the Church which cared for them 
in the days of their need and helplessness. 

Father Haskins the founder of the House of the 
Angel Guardian, may not need this tribute which we 
essay to pay to his memory. His name will always 
be an honored one in Boston, New England and far 
beyond the boundaries of this portion of our beloved 
land. As long as the noble institution which he 
founded stands, as long as it sends forth from its 
saving shelter youths rescued and trained to virtue 
therein, there will be eulogies of Father Haskins 
spoken, and benedictions lavished upon his memory. 
Still, they, upon whom has devolved the duty and 
the honor of carrying on and amplifying the good 
work which he begun, are moved to add their meed 
of praise to the many other tributes that have been, 
that still are, and that will always hereabouts be 
paid to the founder of the House of the Angel 
Guardian, and it is with that aim in view that they 
submit to the reader the following story of Father 
Haskins' life and labors in behalf of the class of 
Catholic boy whom his institution continues to 
shelter and protect, to educate and equip for the 
earning of an honorable livelihood. 



CHAPTER II. 

FATHER HASKINS' BIRTH AND BOYHOOD HIS PARENTS. 

BOTH MEMBERS OF THE EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH THEIR 

PLACE OF RESIDENCE HIS SCHOOL DAYS AND TEACHERS. 

THE founder of the House of the Angel Guardian 
was not born within the pale of the Catholic 
Church. His Catholic faith, consequently, did not 
come to him by direct inheritance — though probably 
if his ancestry were traced back sufficiently far it 
would be found that both on his honored father's 
and on his worthy mother's side, it was Catholic at 
one time. The Haskins' residence stood at the corner 
of Eliot and Carver streets, a section of Boston which 
is now vastly altered in appearance and changed in 
character from what it was at the beginning of the 
present century. Trade and traffic had not then 
invaded that part of Boston. The Providence rail- 
road, whose depot has for years stood at the foot of 
Eliot Street, was not opened until 1835, ^^^ Eliot 
Street itself, together with Carver and the other streets 
running out of it, was filled with fine residences, of 
which, however, few, if, indeed, any, are to be found 
standing to-day, or if standing are almost unrecog- 
nizable because of the alterations and changes which 
have befallen them and their surroundings. There 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 23 

/ 

the subject of this volume was born on the fourth 
day of April, 1806. Of his earliest years and boy- 
hood and school days, Father Haskins' modesty has 
prevented more than the most meager details from 
coming down to us. We know that he went to school 
to Masters Webb and Payson up to his twelfth year. 
Those are both honored and ancient names in Bos- 
tonian annals. There was a Joseph Payson who was 
one of the chief actors in that patriotic affair which, 
towards the close of the last century, turned Boston 
Harbor into an immense tea-pot; and, singularly 
enough, the first minister of the New North Church, 
now St. Stephen's, of which Father Haskins after- 
wards became the pastor, was Rev. John Webb. 
Whether this patriotic Payson and Minister Webb 
were any relations of Father Haskins' first teachers 
we cannot say ; but the fact that Minister Webb once 
preached in the church of which the Episcopalian 
youth whom Master Webb instructed in his 
rudiments was to become the Catholic pastor, is at 
least interesting enough to warrant allusion to the 
circumstance. Father Haskins himself tells us that 
the old Cathedral of the Holy Cross was well known 
to him in his boyhood's days. *'How well," said he 
in after years, when he had become a Catholic and 
been ordained a priest, "how well do I remember the 
venerable Bishop Cheverus and Dr. Matignon, and 
Fathers Taylor and Larrisy. In those days these 
good men were held in such high esteem that 



24 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

even Protestants used to visit them, and many a 
visit I paid in company with my father and mother. 
Many a time, too, I went to Mass, by the invitation 
of Captain Cazneau, and sat in his pew. One of his 
sons was a favorite playmate of mine. He was an 
altar boy. Oh, with what respect I gazed at him when 
he came forth from the sacristy in cassock and 
surplice, with ruffles around the neck, or when he 
mounted the winding stair to the pulpit with the 
large gospel book in his hands, the upper part rest- 
ing against his breast; and reverently laid it upon 
the cushion, then solemnly descended and waited for 
the bishop to ascend and preach to the throngs 
extending far out into the street." It would appear 
from this that even in his youth Father Haskins was 
not without his admiration for and leaning toward the 
Church into which he was destined to enter after- 
wards, and of which he became an honored and 
faithful priest. The ways of God are mysterious and 
the workings of His grace are often inscrutable ; and 
it may have been that while he was attending Mass 
with his Catholic playfellow, young Cazneau, George 
Haskins took, by divine impulse, the first steps on 
that happy road which brought him in his thirty- 
fourth year into the bosom of the true Church. 

One other incident of his boyhood's days is 
mentioned. It appears that in those days it was 
no uncommon thing for Boston school masters to 
administer severe floggings in public to refractor}^ or 




MOST REV. JOHN J WILLIAMS. D. D. 

President of Board of Directors of the House of the Angel Guardian. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 2$ 

delinquent pupils. In fact that practise was not 
abolished until long after Father Haskins had been 
ordained and chosen a member of Boston's school 
committee; though the floggings doubtless were 
milder in those years than when he sat under 
Masters Webb and Payson. The sensitive nature of 
young Haskins revolted. at these public whippings, 
and he conceived such an aversion to flogging that 
he would never hear of it in any institution of which, 
afterward, he had control, and never neglected an 
opportunity of speaking and writing against such 
method of punishment. He held that the results 
aimed at by such whippings could be better and more 
surely reached by humaner forms of discipline ; and 
it is worthy of remark that the ideas which, in his 
youth, he conceived upon this subject are now gener- 
ally approved and entertained. 

In his tenth year young Haskins entered the Bos- 
ton Latin School, which was then located on School 
Street. In fact, the street took its name from this 
school — it was formerly called the Lane leading to 
Gentry Hill — and the school at first stood just 
behind old King's Chapel, its grounds running down 
nearly to where Franklin's statue now stands. The 
school house was a one story building, capable of 
accommodating about a hundred scholars. The 
school was afterward moved to the opposite side of 
the street. The occasion of the removal was the 
desire of King's Chapel to enlarge its site when, in 



26 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

1748, that society resolved to rebuild their place of 
worship. The Latin School was then transferred to 
the south side of the street, to land that was sold the 
city by Colonel Saltonstall ; and the removal of the 
school, which was not regarded at all favorably by 
the people, elicited from a wit of the day this poetic 
quatrain: — 

"A fig for jour learning! I tell jou the town, 

To make the church larger, must pull the school down. 

'Unhappily spoken,' exclaims Master Birch ; 

Then learning, it seems, stops the growth of the church." 

The Latin School was on the southerly side of 
School Street when Father Haskins conned his Latin 
grammar and read his Viri Ronice, Virgi'l and Cicero 
there. He took the full course of studies, spending 
six years at this school and graduating in 1822, 
when he passed to Harvard College. Forty years 
afterward, when he was pastor of St. Stephen's 
Church, at the North End, Father Haskins was a 
member of Boston's school committee, and among 
the schools assigned to him to visit as examiner was 
his old alma mater, the Latin School. In the mean- 
time that school had left School Street and been 
established on Bedford Street. The late Francis 
Gardner was then at its head. Father Haskins was 
very fond of dropping into the Latin School on his 
way back from Roxbury and listening to^the boys 
recite their lessons. Doubtless these visits recalled 
pleasantly his own days in the old school on School 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 2/ 

Street. He was held in the highest esteem by Mas- 
ter Gardner and all the other teachers of the schools ; 
and the Catholic boys in the several classes were 
always pleased when Father Haskins visited their 
rooms or did them the honor of questioning [them 
regarding their studies. 



CHAPTER III. 

AT HARVARD COLLEGE HIS ACADEMIC GRADUATION 

A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT HIS EPISCOPALIAN MINISTRY 

HIS FIRST STEPS TOWARD CATHOLICISM AND ROME. 

THE Boston Latin School has ahvays been a sort 
of a feeder for Harvard College. Itvs^as a good 
deal more of such a tributary to the Cambridge 
institution in the days w^hen young Haskins studied 
in School Street than it proved in after years. Three- 
quarters of a century ago the Catholic population of 
Boston w^as very small, and there v^ere few, if any 
Catholic boys among the pupils of the Latin School. 
Father Haskins, after finishing his six years' course 
of classics in School Street, presented himself to the 
Harvard Institution for examination and matricu-^ 
lation. He passed his examination successfully, was 
entered as a student at Cambridge and went through 
the regular academic course of four years, graduat- 
ing with his degree of A. B., in 1826. He was then 
but a few months more than twenty years of age ; 
but he had already determined upon his after career. 
Always of a studious disposition and of a religious 
bent of mind, he naturally thought of the Episcopa- 
lian ministry, and that caUing pleasing him, as well 
as his parents, who were devoted adherents of their 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 29 

church, he decided to take up the study of Protestant 
theology. He had some distinguished divines as 
his lirst theological tutors, to wit, Revs. Alonzo Potter 
and George W. Doane. The former gentleman, 
who subsequently became the Protestant Episcopal 
bishop of Pennsylvania, was born at LaGrange, Dutch- 
ess County, New York, July 6, 1800. He graduated 
with the highest honors, in 181 8, from Union Col- 
lege, and then began his own theological studiesunder 
Dr. S. H. Turner. At the early age of twenty-one he 
was made professor of mathematics and philosophy 
at Union College, at the same time continuing 
his divinity studies. In 1824 he was ordained to 
the Protestant Episcopalian ministry, and began the 
exercise of the same here at Boston. He remained 
here until 1832, and it was in those years that Father 
Haskins studied Episcopalian theology under him. 
In 1832 he went back to Union College, where he 
remained until he was chosen Bishop of Pennsyl- 
vania in 1845, ^ year after his former pupil, Father 
Haskins, was ordained a priest over in France. Dr. 
Potter died at San Francisco in 1865, and his death 
was heard with great regret by Father Haskins. 
His other Protestant theological teacher, Bishop 
Doane — one of whose relatives is now a Catholic 
priest, in the honored person of Mgr. Doane, of the 
Newark diocese — was born at Trenton, New Jersey, 
May 27, 1799. He graduated from Union College 
in 1818; then studied Protestant theology and was 



' 30 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 



subsequently made an Episcopalian minister. He 
was attached to Trinity Church in this city when 
Father Haskins studied under him, and he became the 
Protestant Episcopalian bishop of New Jersey in 1832. 
He, too, lived to see his old pupil made a Catholic 
priest, for his death did not take place until 1859, 
the year following Father Haskins' purchase of the 
present site of the House of the Angel Guardian. 

At the time that Father Haskins was prosecuting 
his theological studies under these two distinguished 
Protestant divines. Dr. Lyman Beecher, the father 
of Henry Ward Beecher, was one of the Protestant 
preachers of this city. His church was at first down 
on Hanover Street ; but the edifice there was burned 
down on the last day of the year 1829. Subsequently 
the society rebuilt on Bowdoin Street, and Dr. 
Beecher became the pastor of that edifice and its 
congregation. In 1832 he accepted a call to Cin- 
cinnati ; but he subsequently revisited Boston and 
delivered a series of bitter lectures against the Catho- 
lic Church. These lectures were largely instrumental 
in provoking the spirit which destroyed the Ursu- 
line Convent over in Charlestown, an act that will 
always be remembered with shame by Bostonians. 
The fame of Dr. Beecher, more than the character of 
his subject, induced young Haskins to go and hear 
him. He was accompanied on these occasions by his 
intimate friend, George W. Lloyd, who subsequently 
became a Catholic, and received Confirmation and 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 3.I 

first Communion from the hands of Bishop 
Fenwick on February 2, 1841. The bitter assaults 
which Dr. Beecher made upon the Cathohc Church 
appeared so unreasonable to the two young Episco- 
palians, that when it was announced that Bishop 
Fenwick and the learned Dr. O'Flaherty would 
answer Dr. Beecher and refute his charges, they 
determined to attend the Catholic lectures, and thus 
hear both sides of the case. This step on Father 
Haskins' part was unquestionably another move 
in the providential plan which brought him into 
the true Church. The Catholic lectures convinced 
him of the falsity of Dr. Beecher's calumnious 
charges against the Catholic Church ; but the 
time had not yet come for God's grace to achieve its 
largest victory in his soul. He still pursued his 
theological studies in the Protestant Episcopalian 
Church. He also officiated as a lay preacher in the 
Episcopalian Church up at South Leicester, outside of 
Worcester ; and on Feb. 8, 1 829, Bishop Griswold, who 
was then the head of the Protestant Episcopalians in 
Massachusetts, ordained him a deacon, and in that 
capacity he was appointed chaplain to the House 
of Industry, over in South Boston. While he was 
filling this position. Father Haskins came into con- 
tact with Rev. William Wiley who was then one of 
the staff of priests connected with the Cathedral on 
Franklin Street ; and his acquaintance with that 
clergyman proved a very happy circumstance for 



32 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

him, inasmuch as, subsequently, it contributed in 
a marked manner to bringing him to a conviction of 
Catholic truth ; and thus materially hastened his 
conversion. The way wherein Father Haskins 
made the acquaintance of Father Wiley was this : 
Among the inmates of the South Boston institution 
was a poor old Irishwoman, who, when she felt 
her last hours approaching, begged those about her 
not to let her die without seeing a priest, and 
securing the last rites of the Church. When she 
made this appeal to the superintendent, who was a 
Protestant, that official told her that he would send 
her somebody who would do her just as much good 
as the priest. Minister Haskins, the chaplain of the in- 
stitution, was the person the superintendent sent the 
dying woman, but as soon as Father Haskins heard 
the old lady's piteous appeal for her own priest, his 
heart was touched and he declared that she should 
have a priest, adding that he was going to get one 
for her himself. Straightway he came back to the 
city, and taking Rev. Mr. Price, another Episco- 
palian minister, with him, on May 22, 1830, he 
went down to the bishop's residence in Franklin 
Street, where he was received by Father Wile3^ Mr. 
Haskins at once stated the reason why he had come 
and announced his true character, that of a Protes- 
tant minister. It was such an unusual happening in 
those days for a Protestant minister to come and ask a 
Catholic priest to attend a sick call in an institution of 










REV. FATHER DOUGHERTY, 

One of the first Trustees of the House of the Angel Guardian. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 33 

which the minister was chaplain, that Father Wiley 
wisely concluded Mr. Haskins mustbe an exceptional 
sort of a preacher. He engaged him in conversation 
and discovered that he was indeed such a man. Nat- 
urally the conversation turned upon religious topics 
andFather Wiley improved the opportunity given him, 
and instilled some Catholic truths in his caller's mind. 
They found lodgment there, too, for after he had 
left the Episcopal residence Mr. Haskins remarked to 
a Protestant acquaintance, whom he told of his visit 
to Franklin Street, that the priest had stated certain 
things the truth or falsity of which he was going to find 
out by study and personal examination. The ex- 
amination and study, which he actually did begin 
without delay, may be said to have been another 
and a strange impulse of grace within his soul ; for 
from that time on Mr. Haskins was never al- 
together content in the Protestant Church, always 
more or less doubtful of his Protestant faith, and 
within comparatively a few years after his talk with 
Father Wiley, he cut himself loose from his Protes- 
tant surroundings and sought admission into the 
Catholic Church. Perhaps, too, the good old Irish- 
woman's prayers — after Father Wiley had gone over 
to the House of Industry and prepared her for her 
passage from time to eternity — operated also in his 
favor. For no soodier did Mr. Haskins reach her 
bedside the following day than she poured out her 
heart in thanks to him for his kindness in getting her 
3 



34 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

a priest and the consolations of her religion, exclaim- 
ing again and again : "God bless you, sir, God bless 
you, and may the grace of God make a Catholic of 
yourself before you die!" How it must have glad- 
dened this good soul in heaven when her prayer was 
answered, as it subsequently was, by Chaplain Ras- 
kins' conversion and his ordination to the priest- 
hood ! The ways in which the grace of God operates 
are often mysterious, and who can say that in this 
faithful old Irishwoman's insistence for a priest, 
coupled with the circumstance that Chaplain Haskins, 
in the charity of his heart, was the chosen one to 
see that her request was granted, the hand of God 
was not moving things so as to bring the founder 
of the House of the Angel Guardian into the true 
Church, in order that he might accomplish therein 
the great things which as Father Haskins he per- 
formed ! 

Chaplain Haskins did not remain very long at the 
South Boston correctional institution, though while 
there he won the praise of the officials and the hearts 
of the inmates by his faithful and cheerful compliance 
with all the requirements of his position. During 
his incumbency of the superintendency his brother 
John was married ; M. A. Curtis was made his as- 
sistant, and in company with Rev. Mr. Price he 
sailed for Baltimore where he visited many correc- 
tional houses, as he also did at Philadelphia, on his 
return trip He was still in deacon's orders, when, 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 35 

in October, 1830, he was called to be rector of Grace 
Church in the city proper. That call constituted no 
small compliment, for it was not usual for a congrega- 
tion to invite other than a full-fledged minister to 
occupy its pulpit and become its rector. Mr. Haskins 
accepted the call, seeing in it a larger field for his zeal ; 
and as soon as possible afterwards Bishop Griswold 
made him a fully-ordained Episcopalian minister. 
His ordination took place on December 9th, 1830, 
and the new rector at once assumed charge of his 
flock. His church was located in a section of Boston 
which was largely peopled by Irish-Americans, who 
were, of course, all Catholics. Years afterwards, when 
he was a Catholic priest in the North End, Father 
Haskins was fond of telling how, as rector of Grace 
Church, he had often tried to induce the Irish- 
American lads down there to attend his Episcopalian 
services, but could never get them to do so. The 
most they would do for him — and it cost him a pretty 
penny for candy and cakes to get them to do even 
that — was to come to his house and play the games 
which he had provided for them. While the lads 
were enjoying themselves at the back-gammon boards, 
or at checkers and dominoes, Mr. Haskins would 
talk Scripture to them and try to inculcate his 
peculiar views regarding religion. His little scheme 
used to meet with some success in winter, when boys 
find it more pleasant to stay indoors than out ; but as 
soon as the snow left the ground and the frost went out 



36 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

of the air, his candy and his games lost their attrac- 
tiveness, and the Catholic lads went to his house no 
more. Father Haskins also frequently admitted that 
the boys were sharper than he was. He thought 
that he was making an impression upon them and 
winning them over to Episcopalianism. But he was 
disillusionized when he overheard one of the lads refer- 
ing to him, not knowing that he was nearby, as an old 
Protestant minister whose gifts they were willing to 
take, and whose checkers and dominoes were enjoy- 
able, but of whose preaching they wanted nothing at 
all. Mr. Haskins was not permitted to remain long 
the rector of this Boston church. A year after he 
assumed charge of the congregation he was called 
to a more responsible post down at Providence, R. I. 
Grace Church in that city was then, as is still, one of 
the most important, if not the most important Epis- 
copalian congregation in the whole town ; and it was 
to that church that Father Haskins was called and went 
in October, 1831, being then but a little over twenty- 
five years of age, and less than one year a full 
Episcopalian minister. He took with him to Prov- 
idence the same zeal and earnestness which had 
characterized his ministerial labors in Boston, and the 
result, as might be expected, was that he was con- 
sidered a very successful minister. His congregation 
were greatly pleased with the young man who 
considered no toil too arduous, and who always had a 
cheery smile and encouraging word for everybody. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 37 

But Father Haskins — we call him by the name which 
he liked best, even though at the time of which we 
are speaking he was not entitled to that name — 
was ill at ease himself in those days. He was not 
at all sure of his own religious position. He had 
doubts about his faith and his creed, and these doubts 
would not down ; but on the contrary, appeared to grow 
stronger and more bothersome to him as the days 
went on. It was no easy task for him to wear a 
smiling countenance and speak an inspiring word to 
people he met, when his own heart was heavy with 
inquietudes," and his own soul was restless within 
him. He found himself in such straits at times that 
he hardly knew what to do. He sought relief in vain 
instudy, and it was without gain that he consulted his 
brethren in the Episcopalian ministry. He had a 
cousin on his mother's side, Rev. Mr. Foxcroft — 
his own full name was George Foxcroft Haskins — 
in that ministry, and he finally persuaded that 
gentleman to run over to Taunton with him, in or- 
der that he might talk again with his former Boston 
acquaintance, Father Wiley. Father Wiley had been 
appointed pastor of St. Mary's Church, Taunton, 
since Father Haskins had met him at the Episcopal 
residence in Franklin Street : but the Episcopalian 
minister kept himself informed regarding the where- 
abouts of the Catholic priest, as if he felt a present- 
iment that he would need to consult Father Wiley 
again on matters of religion. To Taunton the two 



38 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

ministers accordingly went one day, and they were 
hospitably welcomed by the pastor of St. Mary's, who 
was only too glad to be of service to Mr. Haskins, 
in whom he recognized an earnest seeker after 
truth. They spent the greater part of the day with 
Father Wiley, who enlightened Mr. Haskins on 
the several points that caused him difficulty, exhorted 
him to continue his studies of Catholic teachings and 
predicted that he would never find peace of mind or 
contentment of soul until he became a Catholic 
himself. 

During his connection with Grace Church an 
experience befel Father Haskins which he was after- 
wards fond of relating. "I shall never forget," he 
often said, "an old Catholic woman in Providence 
who closed my mouth very effectively one evening- 
One of the family was a Protestant and a member of 
my Congregation. I called to see him, as it was my 
custom to do with all the members of the congrega- 
tion, and while at his house I began to extol the 
Episcopalian Church and exhorted him to be faithful 
in his duties to it, especially in his frequentation of 
its sacraments. It would have been far better for 
me if I had kept quiet on these particular points, for 
when I was in the middle of an impassioned exhorta- 
tion, wherein I spoke of the apostolical succession of 
our ministry, the bread of life contained in the 
sacrament which I was urging him to frequent, inas- 
much as it contained the body of our Lord, this old 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 39 

lady, whom I had hardly noticed, but who was sitting 
near the fire in a corner of the room, lifted up her 
voice and gave me a dressing down which I did not 
forget in a hurry. 'Inagh,' said she, 'but you talk 
glibly about apostolic succession ! Yet where is your 
succession, my fine sir? Who ordained you and 
your bishop and the first bishop of your church? If 
it was a bishop of the Catholic Church, then you 
have disgraced your mother and are an unworthy son 
since you are showing yourself rebellious and ungrate- 
ful towards her. If it was not a bishop of the 
Catholic Church, then you are nothing but an upstart 
and an impostor, who are deceiving your congregation 
and leading souls astray, and you will have to answer 
to God one day for that sin and these souls. You 
prate about Sacraments,' she went on, 'but where are 
your Sacraments? Who gave you the power to 
consecrate bread and wine? Who authorized you 
to dispense the mysteries of God? Who,' but Min- 
ister Haskins," said Father Haskins, "did not want to 
hear any more." Those were the very questions he 
had often asked himself and been unable to answer 
satisfactorily. So he got up from his chair in a 
hurry, murmured some indistinct words, took his 
hat and went out into the night in a very disturbed 
frame of mind, but with one determination fixed in 
his mind, to give up pastoral work at once and never 
to resume it until his doubts were settled, one way or 
the other. 



40 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

f 

And as a matter of fact, although he remained in 
the Protestant Church and the Episcopalian ministry 
for some years after the event which he thus described 
took place, Father Haskins never again could be 
induced to assume the charge of a congregation. 
The people of Grace Church, Providence, who were 
very favorably impressed with the young minister, 
and who admired his zeal, sincerity of purpose, and 
devotion to duty, earnestly besought him time and 
again, to become their rector. But although the 
offer was a tempting one — for Grace Church, as 
already remarked, was one of the leading Protestant 
congregations of Providence, composed of members 
of the wealthiest and most intelligent Protestant 
families — Father Haskins could not be induced to 
consider it. The words of the old Irish woman sounded 
continually in his ears. He. could find no satisfactory 
answers to her arguments, and he was not the sort 
of man to act the part of an impostor and usurper 
in holy things if he could see his way to escaping 
from such a position when he found himself placed 
therein. Declining, therefore, the flattering offer 
held out to him by the Grace Church congregation, 
and closing his eyes to the inviting prospects which 
he saw lay beyond his acceptance of that offer, 
the young minister severed all his Rhode Island re- 
lations and came back to Boston, to deliberate with 
himself what his future course should be. That 
was in 1832, and the next we hear of him he was 




BRO. MICHAEL BRO. THOMAS BRO. THEODORE (deceased) 

BRO. LINUS BRO. JUSTINIAN (deceased) BRO. EDWARD 

The Six Brothers who came to Bo^ton in 1874 
and took charge ot the House of the Angel Ciiiardian and its work. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 4I 

installed as chaplain in the House of Reformation. 
His duties there required of him very little doctrinal 
teaching. It was sufficient for the fulfilment of his 
obligations for him to exercise a sort of a spiritual 
supervision over his charges, to instil into their 
minds the ordinary precepts of morality and to warn 
them against the injurious effects of sin and vice. He 
had, of course, to conduct the regular Sunday 
services, but he managed to make those as unsecta- 
rian as he possibly could do so ; and in the meantime 
he was following up his own researches after religious 
truth, with a view of taking a fixed stand as soon as 
his doubts were cleared away. When a person is born 
and has been brought up in any particular creed ; when 
he sees that faith professed and practised by those who 
are near and dear to him ; when he knows that the 
lives of many who hold his faith are pure, upright, 
and honest lives, it is not the easiest thing in the 
world for him to become convinced that he is wrong- 
religiously, that his parents were wrong before him, 
and that the faith of his friends and relatives is all a 
mistake and, worse still, a heresy. Father Haskins 
did not escape the bitter experiences which come to 
all persons when they begin to doubt of the truth of 
their religion. He had his ordeals to face, his sacri 
fices to contemplate, and hence it is not at all sur- 
prising that his conversion to Catholicism required 
time for its completion. He remained full chaplain 
of the House of Reformation until 1836, a period of 



42 LIFE OF FATHER HASKIXS. 

about four years. That his mind was not idle in 
that time, and that he was gradually cutting away 
from his former religious moorings and drawing 
nearer and nearer to the Catholic Church is made 
very plain from the fact that on the fourth day of 
January, 1837, he resolved to perform no more min- 
isterial acts as a Protestant clergyman, and wrote in 
his diary to this effect : ''Administered communion 
for the last time as a Protestant, having resolved to do 
so no more until I have settled certain religious 
scruples which have long bothered my mind andcon- 
science." It was the custom of the managers of the 
House ofReformation to elect or re-elect their officers 
at the beginning of each new year. Father Haskins, 
who always gave complete satisfaction in whatever post 
he was placed, was unanimously re-elected chaplain. 
When he was informed of that fact by the directors, 
he, in turn, informed them that, while he felt highly 
complimented by the unanimous vote with which 
they had re-elected him, he could not accept the full 
chaplaincy again, inasmuch as he was not satisfied 
in his mind that he could conscientiously discharge 
all the duties of a chaplain. This information was 
considerable of a surprise to the institution's manage- 
ment, but the directors recognized the sincerity and 
honesty of the retiring chaplain, and the result, to 
quote from Father Haskins' diary, was that ''They 
treated me with the utmost kindness and politeness." 
It is related of him that, at this period of his career. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 43 

the directors of the House of Reformation, who knew 
his worth and appreciated his work, were so loath to 
part with Chaplain Haskins that one of them said to 
him, in the hope of inducing him to remain at the 
institution, "We don't care what your religious con- 
victions may be ; we don't care if you are a 
Mohammedan even. We want you to remain at the 
post for which you are so well qualified, only don't 
teach the children to follow you in your religious va- 
garies." For a few years after this event Mr. Haskins 
acted in various public capacities for his native city. 
He was Overseer of the Poor, Master of the Boylston 
Asylum, teacher in the School of Moral Discipline, 
etc., etc., positions which called for the exercise of 
benevolence and charity rather than for that of 
religion ; and in which his scruples could find little 
or nothing to upbraid him with doing. But his feet 
were gradually going farther and farther in the 
direction of Rome. The grace of God was asserting 
itself more strongly every day in his soul. The way 
was becoming clearer before his gaze, and the light 
of truth shone more brightly before His eyes. In 
1840, when he was in his thirty-fourth year, the time 
came for him to take the decisive step, and once he 
recognized where his duty lay, he hesitated no longer. 
He resigned all the positions which he held as a 
Protestant minister. He had previously resigned 
his Episcopalian ministry into the hands of Bishop 
Griswold who had ordained him ten years before ; 



44 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

and then he hurried down to Taunton to inform his 
good friend, Father Wiley, who was still the pastor 
of St. Mary's Church in that city, of his determination 
to become a Catholic. Needless to say that that good 
priest, who often had prayed that the grace of the 
faith might be vouchsafed to Chaplain Haskins, was 
overjoyed when he heard from that gentleman's own 
lips that his prayers had been answered. Father 
Haskins expressed a desire to remain with Father 
Wiley for a few days in order to prepare for his 
reception into the Catholic fold. He was gladly 
made a welcome guest, and Father Wiley, who 
was a man of uncommon abilities, dispelled the last 
lingering semblance of shadows of doubt that re- 
mained in his friend's mind regarding the wisdom of 
the steps he had begun and was about to finish. 
After several days spent in retreat, prayer and medi- 
tation, Father Haskins, accompanied by Father 
Wiley, came up from Taunton to Boston, and made 
his formal abjuration of Protestantism to Bishop 
Fenwick, before the altar of the Cathedral, on 
November ii, 1840, after which he was baptized 
conditionally according to the Catholic form. 
From Sargent's canvas over the altar the cruci- 
fied Christ looked down and appeared to smile 
upon his sacrifice. A few days later the convert 
received his First Conimunion from the hands 
of Bishop Fenwick, who also confirmed him ; and 
then, almost immediately, he turned his face toward 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 45 

Rome and hurried across the Atlantic in order, 
to quote his own words, "That I might lay upon 
the tomb of the Apostles, and at the feet of the 
Holy Father, Gregory XVI. the votive offering of 
mv life. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE CONVERT CROSSES THE OCEAN HIS VISIT TO ROME 

HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH ARCHBISHOP BAYLEY — MARIE 
ALPHONSE RATISBONNE — A SEMINARIAN AT ST. SULPICE 

IN PARIS ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS ONE OF HIS FELLOW 

STUDENTS — HIS ORDINATION AND RETURN TO BOSTON. 

ONCE that he had experienced the happiness of 
finding himself safe within the fold of the 
Church, which afforded his mind that knowledge of 
religious truth which he had so long sought, and gave 
his soul that peace and contentment for w^hich it had 
so ardently yearned, Father Haskins determined 
to cross the Atlantic. His reasons for taking this 
trip were two-fold. He wished to see with his own 
eyes the Vicar of Christ upon earth and to view in 
that city w^here it is seen at its best, the central 
organism of the great Church which he now 
regarded with the intense love of a child w^ho, long 
separated from his mother, finds himself safe at last 
within her sheltering arms. He had also made up 
his mind to study for the Catholic priesthood, and 
by the advice of friends, whose counsel he highly 
valued, he had chosen the Grand Seminary of Paris 
for his theological Alma Mater. He was now^ in his 
thirty-fifth year, young enough to accomplish great 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 47 

things — which he subsequently did — in the zeal of 
his newly found faith, and ardent enough to consider 
as trivial all obstacles that appeared to bar his 
onward course. And yet it would be a grievous 
mistake to conclude that these obstacles were either 
few or slight. Compared, of course, with the issues 
which were at stake — the obedience to the voice of 
God and the promptings of conscience — all obstacles 
that interposed in Father Haskins'case at this period 
of his life, were of small account. But those who 
have been born and bred in the true faith never fully 
realize the sacrifices which a convert to that faith is 
called upon to make when the time comes for him 
to sever the relations which have previously formed 
so close a part of his life. Half a century ago, here in 
New England, conversions from Protestantism to 
Catholicism were not looked upon by non-Catholics 
with anything like that indifference or favor in which 
they are now regarded. A Catholic then was, in 
the estimation of the average New England Protes- 
tant, more or less of a pariah, and it was considered in 
Protestant circles no small reproach for a non-Cath- 
olic to abjure his ancestral religion and join the 
Catholic Church. Then, too, family ties had in most 
instances of Catholic conversions to be sundered. 
Lifelong friendships were necessarily forfeited, and 
advantageous prospects had frequently to be sur- 
rendered, without any promise of others to take 
their place. But Father Raskins was not the sort of 



48 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

a man to turn back after once having put his hand 
to the plough. He was made of sterner material, and 
once he saw the path of duty outlined for him his 
feet never dreamed of hesitating to enter it and pur- 
sue it to the end. He accordingly set his aflfairs in 
order, bade adieu to his friends on this side of the 
water, and in the year 1841, on April 3, rejoicing 
in the new happiness, to use his own words, "of 
being received into the Catholic Church — the 
glorious Church of the Patriarchs and Prophets, 
of the Apostles and Saints, whose cornerstone is 
Christ," — he sailed on the bark Bevis^ Captain 
Briggs, for Europe, Rome and Paris being his prin- 
cipal objective points. 

About the same time that Father Haskins was 
preparing to enter the Catholic priesthood, and 
nearly contemporaneously with his own ordination, 
occurred the conversion and ordination of another 
ex-Episcopalian minister, who was destined to attain 
very high rank and position in the American Cath- 
olic Church. Reference is made to Most Rev. James 
Roosevelt Bayley, whose acquaintance Father Has- 
kins formed in Rome, on his first visit to that city, 
and who subsequently entered the Sulpician Semin- 
ary at Paris with him, to prepare there for Catholic 
ordination. Mr. Bayley was a New Yorker by birth, 
eight years the junior of Father Haskins, having been 
born August 23, 18 14. His parentage and all his 
family were Episcopalian, and as he grew up he 




COURT YARD OF THE HOUSh OF THE ANQEL GUARDIAN. 



1. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 49 

elected to study for the Episcopalian ministry, for 
which service he was in due course of time ordained. 
At the time of Father Haskins' conversion, Minister 
Bayley held an Episcopalian pastorate at Harlem, 
N. Y., but he had begun to doubt the correctness 
of his religious belief, and not being able to satisfy 
his scruples while remaining in his Episcopalian 
pastorate, he resigned that and betook himself to 
Rome. There he met Father Haskins, who was able, 
from his own previous experience, to enlighten 
his companion upon certain poin'.s of Catholic Doc- 
trine, and who, by doing that, materially aided in the 
work of Mr. Bayley's conv*ersion. All his doubts 
removed, Mr. Bayley asked for admission into the 
Catholic fold, and he had the happiness of being 
received into the Church by Cardinal Franzoni, who 
heard his abjuration of Protestantism, and afterward 
confirmed him in the rooms of St. Ignatius at Rome, 
at the same time, giving him his First Communion^ 
Father Bayley was ordained a priest in 1 842, a couple 
of years before Father Haskins, and after travelling 
extensively in Europe, he came back to this country 
and became affiliated with the archdiocese of New 
York. He served as secretary to Archbishop 
Hughes from 1846 until 1853. In the latter year 
he was made the first bishop of the diocese of New- 
ark, and his consecration took place in the old St. 
Patrick's Cathedral in Mott Street, New York, on 
Oct. 30, 1853. Archbishop Hughes was the conse- 
4 



50 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

crating prelate, and together with Bishop Bayley were 
mitred Bishop Loughlin for the diocese of Brooklyn, 
and Bishop De Goesbriand for the Burlington diocese, 
over which the venerable prelate is still most worthily 
presiding. In 1872 Father Haskins' former fellow- 
student at Paris, and his companion in Rome, was 
promoted from the Newark diocese to the archdiocese 
of Baltimore, which he governed with admirable skill 
and success up to the time of his death, October 
3, 1877, five years to a day almost later than the 
demise of Father Haskins. 

While in Rome, on this, his first visit to the Eternal 
City, Father Haskins had the felicity of attending a 
notable ceremony, to wit, the conversion, or rather 
the reception into the Church of Alphonse Ratis- 
bonne, a former believer in Judaism, which event 
took place on the last day of January, 1842. The 
Baron de Bussieres has given us the following 
account of that ceremony, which, because it was wit- 
nessed by the subject of this volume, may, without 
impropriety, be quoted here. ''About half-past 
eight on the morning of January 31st, 1842," writes 
the Baron, "M. Ratisbonne, clothed in the white robe 
of a catechumen, was led in by the Rev. Father 
Villefort, who had prepared him for Baptism, and by 
Baron Theodore de Bussieres (whose words are here 
cited), his sponsor, and took his place in the Chapel of 
St. Andrew, near the prmcipal entrance of the church 
(San Andrea delle Frate). At nine o'clock his em- 



LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 5 I 

inence, Cardinal Patrizi, vicar of His Holiness, began 
to recite the prayers prescribed in the ritual for the 
baptism of adults. There are found psalms which 
seem as though they had been written expressly to 
clothe in words the feeling of the catechumen, and 
to tell the way in which the Lord had been pleased 
to call him to the truth. For so wondrous is the 
depth of the Holy Scriptures, that every one finds 
in them the expressions which render most aptly the 
ever-varying experiences of his soul and the manifold 
circumstances of his inner life. * * * When these pre- 
liminary prayers were said His Eminence proceeded 
in procession to the lower end of the church. There 
Father Villefort and M. de Bussieres presented to 
him the young Jew. 'What cravest thou of the 
Church of God?' 'Faith.' And this faith, this 
holy faith, was his already ; the bright and morning 
star had already risen upon him and enlightened him 
with its clear shining. Already has the bishop 
breathed thrice upon him, to put to tlight the spirit of 
evil ; he has marked him with the Christian's charac- 
teristic mark, the venerable sign of the cross, on his 
forehead, on his eyes, on his breast, on his shoulders, 
in order to impress upon the new-born Christian 
that it was henceforth his duty to hallow to Christ 
his inteihgence and his heart, and to bear with lov- 
ing readiness the yoke of the cross. He has given 
him to taste the salt of wisdom, and said over him 
the prayers of exorcism. He is asked his name. 



52 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

'Marie,' is his reply, with an outburst of gratitude 
and love. Marie ! the thrice blessed name of the 
•Queen of the Patriarchs, who has opened for him 
the gates of the Church, and will open for him those 
of heaven — the everlasting gates." 

It is easy to imagine what profound impressions 
his attendance at the ceremony thus graphically 
portrayed by one who took a prominent part in it, 
produced upon the receptive soul of George Fox- 
croft Haskins, in whose own heart the faith in which 
Alphonse Ratisbonne was then baptized, was still 
burning with all its pristine fervor and radiance. 
How his thoughts must have gone back across the 
seas, from the stately church of San Andrea delle 
Frate to the more modest but still fondly beloved 
Cathedral of the Holy Cross in his native city, 
where a couple of years before he had himself been 
the central figure in a similar ceremony ! Who 
•doubts but that as he mused, Father Haskins saw 
himself in Ratisbonne's place, beheld the venerable 
Bishop Fenwick in the person of Cardinal Patrizi, 
saw dear Father Wiley in the place of Father Ville. 
fort, and thanked God that the faith of the happy 
Marie- Alphonse Ratisbonne was also his own faith 
and his sure possession for all future time ! 

After leaving Rome, where he tarried for quite a 
lengthy period — he spent four months at the College 
of the Propaganda and for eight others he attended 
the lectures at the English College — Father Haskins 



LIFE OF FATHER HAS KINS. 53 

visited several other of the principal European 
cities, and devoted himself chiefly, while in them, 
to visiting the churches and thanking God therein, 
over and over again, for the great graces and 
happiness which had been vouchsafed him. 
At last the hour came for him to enter the Parisian 
Seminary, to study therein Catholic theology 
and prepare for the great work that was w^aiting 
for him to do after his ordination. By a happy 
coincidence the Grand Seminary of Paris, at the 
time that Father Haskins entered it to begin his 
divinity course, counted among its students some 
young levites who were studying for the archdiocese 
of Boston, and who were destined to become prom- 
inent personages in after years here in this city. 
Chief among such students was our present well- 
beloved and highly honored archbishop, then just 
attaining his manhood, who had entered the Sem- 
inary the year before, and who was to remain there 
until 1845, when he was ordained to the priesthood 
by Archbishop Affre, who subsequently fell a mar- 
tyr to duty before the barricades in the Faubourg 
St. Antoine. Father Haskins, whose own ordina- 
tion took place in the early part of 1844, ^^^^ 
enjoyed the archbishop's companionship and shin- 
ing example for a couple of years, and it is running 
no risk to say that he profited in many ways and in 
a marked manner from this association with an 
ecclesiastic whose whole career has ever been char- 



54 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

acterized with eminent virtues, and whose influence 
upon those fortunate enough to be brought into 
contact with His Grace has never failed to be highly 
beneficial. Still another student at the Paris Sem- 
inary when Father Haskins was reading his theology 
there, was Patrick F. Lyndon, who afterwards became 
the vicar-general of the archdiocese, the pastor of 
St. Joseph's Church, at the West End, of St. Mary's, 
Charlestown, and of SS. Peter and Paul's, in South 
Boston ; and there were some other Boston Semin- 
arians classmates of his during his two years' stay 
at Paris. His divinity course was completed in two 
years, for he was an apt student, and he was 
fairly well acquainted with the basal principals of 
Catholic theology before he entered the Seminary. 
He would fain have remained longer at the Seminary, 
but priests were few and in great demand here in 
New England in those days, and hence, by the 
direction of Bishop Fenwick, Father Haskins was or- 
dained as soon as his spiritual directors considered 
him qualified for the priesthood, early in 1844, and 
then he was called back to his native city to begin 
his sacerdotal labors in the Boston diocese. The 
diocesan priesthood was then small in number com- 
pared to its present strength. About a year and a 
half before Father Haskins' return to the diocese 
the Boston clergy held their first spiritual retreat and 
synod, and as the priests who attended those gather- 
ings were probably all, or nearly all of those in the 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 55 

diocese when Father Haskins began his work here, 
it may interest the reader to see the list of their 
names. That veteran priest, Father McElroy, S. J., 
whose name is still held in benediction here, was 
the preacher of the retreat. Bishop Fenwick pre- 
sided at the exercises of the retreat and the sessions 
of the synod. Vicar-General Tyler who, a couple 
of years later, became the first bishop of Hartford, 
acted as promoter. Rev. John B. Fitzpatrick, who 
succeeded Bishop Fenwick, was secretary ; and the 
following priests, then practically all the New Eng- 
land clergy, attended both retreat and synod. Revs. 
James Fitton, Richard Hardy, John O'Beirne, William 
Ivers, William Wiley, Edward Murphy, John B. 
Daly, Patrick Flood,Thomas O'SuUivan, John Strain, 
Thomas Lynch, Terence Fitzsimmons, Denis Ryan, 
Aldoph Williamson, Patrick Byrne, James T. Mc- 
Dermott, Michael Lynch, John Brady, Patrick 
O'Beirne, John Corry, James O'Reilly, John D. 
Brady, Jeremiah O'Callaghan, Patrick Canavan, 
John B. McMahon, James Conway, T. J. O'Flaherty, 
and Father Roloff. Counting in the bishop and 
Fathers Tyler and Fitzpatrick, there were, therefore, 
thirty-one clergymen at this first Boston synod, and 
to extend a welcome soon afterwards to Father 
Haskins when he came back from Paris to be a col- 
league and co-laborer with them. 



CHAPTER V. 

FATHER HASKINS' PRIESTHOOD HE GOES TO FATHER WILEY 

AT PROVIDENCE SHORT SKETCH OF THAT ZEALOUS 

PRIEST BACK AGAIN AT BOSTON APPOINTED PASTOR OF 

ST. John's church — he purchases the new north 
CHURCH — ST. Stephen's congregation. 

IT was certainly a bit of rare good fortune for 
Father Haskins that, when he came back as a 
young priest from Paris after his ordination in that 
city, the first assignment he received for duty was 
to assist Father Wiley, who was then located down 
at Providence. That zealous clergyman whom 
Father Haskins always regarded while he lived with 
singular affection, was one of the two first priests 
ordained by Bishop Fenwick of hallowed memory. 
Father Wiley and Father Fitton were trained for the 
holy ministry by Bishop Fenwick himself. He took 
them into his own house and taught them the sacred 
sciences. He ordained them at Christmas-tide, 
1827, and he kept Father Wiley at the Cathedral 
as an assistant up to September, 183 1, when he 
sent the young priest to Salem, to attend to the 
spiritual needs of the faithful at that place, and also 
of those at Waltham. Being a man full of zeal and 
enterprise in those days. Father Wiley speedily 
completed the Salem Church, which had been 




03 

a. 
< 

E 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 5/ 

begun in 1817, but which, for lack of funds, 
had never been finished ; and he invited Bishop 
Fenvvick down to Salem on New Year's Day, 1832^ 
in order that the completed church might be 
dedicated. Father Wiley remained at Salem until 
he was relieved by Rev. James Conway, and after 
filling other important positions in the interim, 
such as the pastorate at Taunton, where he enlarged* 
in 1837-8, and beautified the church, wc find him in 
the year which saw Father Haskins ordained at 
Paris, in charge of St. Patrick's Church, on Smith's 
Hill, Providence. Here, too, Father Wiley's zeal 
showed itself in the manner in which he completed 
and beautified his church. This Providence church 
was begun on April 19, 1 84 1 , by Rev. Father Fennelly, 
the pastor of Pawtucket, R. I. Soon after begin- 
ning work on the edfice, however. Father Fennelly 
went to Europe. Rev. Denis Ryan, who had been for 
nearly a quarter of a century on the Maine missions, 
was then sent down to Providence to look after St. 
Patrick's Church; but early in Januar}^ 1842, Father 
Wiley was appointed in his stead, and he pushed 
work on the structure so vigorously that he had the 
church ready for dedication the first Sunday of the 
following July. Bishop Fenwick then went down to 
Providence and dedicated the church which is one 
of the oldest in Roger William's town, and which cele- 
brated its golden jubilee in April, 1891. It may be 
remarked here that Father Wiley was himself a con- 



5 8 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

vert to the Catholic faith. He was, as a child, an 
inmate of a Protestant charitable institution in New 
York, but as he grew up to manhood the grace of 
God called him to a knowledge of the truth, and he 
not only embraced it eagerly, but became a priest, 
in order that he might the more effectively aid 
others to know^ the right religion. It was only 
natural, therefore, that between Father Wiley and 
Father Haskins peculiarly warm relations should 
exist, as they certainly did exist from the first 
moment that Father Haskins, as the Episcopalian 
chaplain, made Father Wiley's acquaintance at the 
old Cathedral in Franklin Street, until the latter's 
death. Father Wiley remained for several years 
pastor of St. Patrick's Church, Providence. The 
parish register contains this account of his last minis- 
terial function there : "I have this day, Easter Sunday, 
given Communion to nineteen hundred people." He 
afterwards was recalled to Boston, in November, 
185 1, and put in charge of St. Nicholas Church, 
East Boston, succeeding as pastor there Rev. 
Charles McCallion. He laid the foundations and 
completed the basement walls of the present stately 
church of the Holy Redeemer, in East Boston, but 
his long labors began then to tell upon him, and on 
April 19, 1855, when he was in the fifty- second year 
of his age, and the twenty-eighth of his priesthood, 
he was summoned to the other world. 

Father Haskins appears to have remained as 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 59 

assistant with Father Wiley only while that priest 
Avas the pastor of St. Patrick's Church, at Providence ; 
and during that period Father Wiley took advantage 
of Father Raskins' presence to go, with the per- 
mission of Bishop Fenwick, over to Europe on a short 
trip in the interests of his health. During his European 
absence Father Haskins was virtually the pastor of the 
Smith's Hill Congregation. The two priests kept up 
an uninterrupted correspondence with each other in 
those days, and their letters, some of which are still 
in existence, show how close was the friendship 
which united these two converts who, by the grace 
of God, had attained the dignity of the Catholic 
priesthood. On Father Wiley's return from Europe 
to Providence, Father Haskins was summoned back 
to Boston. In those days it was not easy for pastors 
to secure or retain curates. The need of priests 
was so great that the bishop, as soon as he ordained 
a new priest, generally assigned him at once to the 
charge of a congregation, for all over the diocese 
there were Catholic communities clamoring for 
resident pastors ; and the bishop naturally did his 
best to respond to such appeals. One of the earliest 
mentions which we find of Father Haskins in the 
annals of the Boston Diocese is that which tells of 
his attendance at the obsequies at the Cathedral, in 
Franklin Street, of Rev. Patrick Byrne, who died 
December 4th, 1844, down at New Bedford, of which 
place he was pastor, but whose remains were brought 



60 LIFE OF FATHER HAS KINS. 

to Boston for interment in St. Augustine's Cemetery, 
over in South Boston. Among the priests who assisted 
at the obsequies in the Cathedral was Father Haskins, 
then located at that church, to which were also at- 
tached at the time Fathers Hardy, Lyndon and 
Crudden. On February 25, 1846, Father Haskins was 
appointed pastor of St. John's Church on Moon Street,. 
at the North End. This church was then but three 
years in existence. It was originally known as St. 
John's Free Church, for the reason that, when it was 
first established, Bishop Fenwick, knowing that the 
people resident in its neighborhood were not over- 
burdened with worldly wealth, desired to have sit- 
tings in it free, so that no one could allege his in- 
ability to hire a pew as an excuse for not attending 
Mass. To get funds for the purchase of the building 
which had been offered him for the church, the bishop 
authorized the Rev. John B. McMahon to solicit 
subscriptions for the purchase. When enough money 
was secured the building in question, a substantial 
brick structure, sixty by forty feet, which had 
originally been erected for mercantile uses was bought 
by the bishop at a cost of $8,000, and it was then 
fitted up for Catholic services. Father McMahon 
became its first pastor, but his administration was 
but a brief one, and in 1846 Rev. Father Haskins, 
then in the second year of his priesthood, was put 
in charge of the congregation. 

It may not be without its interest to the reader. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 6 1 

to read just what churches and what priests there were 
in the Boston diocese in the year when the Founder of 
the House of the Angel Guardian began his pastoral 
labors in Moon Street. Here is the condition of the 
diocese, which then embraced all New England ex- 
cept Connecticut, as we find it stated in the Catholic 
Directory of 1846: At the Cathedral there were 
Bishop Fenwick, his coadjutor, Bishop Fitzpatrick, 
and Fathers P. F. Lyndon, Ambrose Monahan and 
John J. Williams. St. Mary's, Endicott Street, was 
served by Revs. Patrick Flood and James Reilly. 
Rev. Thomas Lynch was the pastor of St. Patrick's, 
Northampton Street. Rev. Terence Fitzsimmons 
had charge of SS. Peter and Paul's, South Boston. 
Father Haskins was at St. John's. Rev. Alexander 
Martin, O. S. F., was pastor of the Holy Trinity, 
Suffolk Street, and Rev. Nicholas O'Brien was in 
charge of St. Nicholas' Church, East Boston. St. 
Augustine's, in South Boston, was without a pastor. 
P'ather Manasses P. Dougherty, whose name will 
never be forgotten while the House of the Angel 
Guardian stands and continues its saving and up- 
lifting work, was the pastor of St. John's Church, in 
East Cambridge ; Rev. Patrick O'Beirne was rector of 
St. Joseph's, Tommy's Rock, Roxbury; and St. 
Mary's, then the only church in Charlestown, was 
served by Revs. George J. Goodwin and M. McGrath. 
Out in Ouincy, St. Mary's, then the one church of the 
Granite City, had Rev. Bernard Carraher as pastor. 



62 LIFE OF FATHER HAS KINS. 

Rev. James Strain attended Waltham and its out- 
lying missions. Rev. James Conway was at Salem, 
pastor of St. Mary's. St. Patrick's, at Lowell, had 
Rev. James McDermott as rector, and St. Peter's, 
Rev. Peter Crudden. The veteran Father Edward 
Murphy was pastor of St. Mary's, then the only con- 
gregation in Fall River ; and Rev. Robert Wilson, 
D. D., filled the pastorate of St. Mary's, Taunton, 
once occupied by Father Haskin's friend, Father 
Wiley. Rev. Thomas McNuity served the faithful 
at New^ Bedford and Sandwich. Up at Chicopee, 
whence they served Northampton and Pittsfield, were 
Father John D. Brady and Bernard O'Cavanagh. 
Rev. Timothy Reirdon travelled between Springfield 
and Saxonville, and Fathers M. W. Gibson and M. 
McEvoy were at St. John's, Worcester's only church. 
Rev. Patrick Canavan attended Newburyporl, Mass., 
and Dover, N. H. Burlington and Middlebury, Vt., 
were looked after by Rev. Jeremiah O'Callaghan. 
Castleton,Vt., Claremont, N. H., were served by Rev. 
John B. O'Daley, O. S. F. Rev. James McGuire 
was pastor of St. Dominic's, Portland ; Rev. Patrick 
Carraher was in charge of Whitefield, Me. Bangor 
and Old Town, in the same state, had Rev. Thomas 
O'SuUivan as resident priest. Rev. William Moran 
was at Benedicta and Houlton, and Rev. John Boyce 
looked after the Catholics of Eastport, Machias, 
Calais and Pleasant Point, in the Pine Tree State. 
It is worthy of mention that the church of which 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 63 

Father Haskins became pastor in 1846 stood on the 
site of the house in which once Hved Samuel Mather, 
brother of Increase Mather, who received the first 
deeree of D. D. conferred in America, and was the 
father of the famous Cotton ]\lather. The Mather 
house was on the east side of Moon Street on the 
corner of Moon Street Court. It was pulled down 
in 1832 to make room for a tobacco warehouse, 
and this warehouse Bishop Fenwick bought and 
transformed into St. John's Free Church. It was 
in Samuel Mather's house on Moon Street that 
Thomas Hutchinson, *' Stingy Tommy " as he was 
nicknamed, who, as British Governor became so 
odious to Bostonians, took refuge with his sister, 
when, in 1765, the Stamp Act troubles broke out in 
the city. He was routed out by the mob, however, 
and forced to go elsewhere. The appointment of 
Father Haskins to the pastorate of St. John's put 
new vigor in the congregation. The Founder of 
the House of the Angel Guardian was very well and 
very favorably known to the residents of that section 
of the city, and his former connection with the Pro- 
testant ministry served to attract others than Catholics 
to his church. Then, too, he was always out and 
about among the people. He was fond of visit- 
ing them in their homes, to see what their daily 
avocations were, to inquire after their children in 
particular — for he always had a great love for the 
little ones — and to urge the delinquent to better per- 



64 LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 

formance of their religious duties. It may be truly 
said that it was at this period of his life that he 
first conceived the idea of founding an institution 
which should shelter, educate, and train, to virtue 
homeless, destitute and orphan children, and receive 
other lads whom their parents, for one reason or 
another, were unable to care for properly at home. 
It was a mistake, though, to imagine that Father 
Haskins, even from the outset, contemplated in 
founding the House of the Angel Guardian, a purely 
charitable institution. He counted from the start 
upon receiving remuneration from persons able to 
pay for the care which he gave to the inmates of his 
home. Of this matter, however, we will have more 
to say in a subsequent chapter. We are now deal- 
ing with his pastoral labors. From 1846 up to 1862 
Father Haskins continued to preach to his people 
Sunday after Sunday at the Masses which he said 
in the Moon Street Church. That edifice was fast 
becoming all too small, though, for the parish- 
ioners, who were rapidly increasing in numbers at 
the North End. Father Haskins recognized the 
need of securing more room, and he was constantly 
on the lookout for an opening to secure a better site 
for his church. Such an opportunity did not come 
to him until 1862, when the New North Church, as it 
was called, was put on the market. This edifice 
dates from 1802, but the congregation which built 
it was of much older date. In 1714, about a dozen 




> 
o 

H 

i 

Si 

o 



LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 6$ 

and a half of comfortably situated mechanics, whose 
faith was belief in Protestant Congregationalism, 
erected a small wooden building for a place of 
worship at the corner of Clark and Hanover Streets. 
These North End Congregationalists appear to 
have appealed in vain to their wealthier co-religionists 
in other parts of Boston for assistance to build this 
church, for it is recorded of them that they erected 
the edifice themselves, " unassisted by the more 
wealthy part of the community except by their 
prayers and good wishes, " probably a sarcastic 
way of telling us that the wealthier Congregationalists 
gave them no financial help. This little congrega- 
tional chapel was enlarged in 1730. In 1802, the 
enlarged edifice was superceded by a new church. 
Three years later a bell from Paul Revere's foundry, 
at the North End, was placed in the tower. The 
first minister of this congregation — to whom allusion 
has been made in a preceding chapter — was Rev. 
John Webb, at whose ordination and installation the 
two Mathers assisted. The church, as originally 
built, had to be moved back some years subsequently 
when Hanover Street was widened. After Father 
Haskins bought it for his congregation, the interior 
was altered considerably, as a matter of course, and 
fitted for Catholic services. The church was 
dedicated to St. Stephen, and opened for the first 
time by Catholic worship on November 27th, 1862, 
when the present beloved Archbishop of Boston, 



66 LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 

then Vicar-general of Bishop Fitzpatrick, dedicated 
it, in the presence of a notable gathering of the clergy 
and the congregation. Father Haskins remained 
the pastor of this church till the day of his death. 
He saw the Catholics of his parish multiply rapidly ; 
but he looked after their spiritual interests with zeal 
and fidelity, neglecting no opportunity, either, of 
promoting their temporal welfare. During the 
stormy period of the Civil War, when some stirring 
events took place at the North End, he was the 
vigilant guardian of the flock ; and afterwards, when 
peace and prosperity came back to the country, he 
was instrumental in shaping the career of many 
a Catholic North Ender who rose to competence and 
prominence. He was personally known to all his 
people. For that matter he was known to almost 
everybody in Boston, but the honors that were paid 
to him during his life, and the silent homage that 
was tendered to him as he lay in state, after his 
death, before the altar at which he had so often 
ministered, told in what lofty estimation the pastor 
of St. Stephen's Church, and the Founder of the 
House of the Angel Guardian was held by Boston- 
ians, Protestants as well as CathoUcs, who had seen 
him going about daily doing good during the 
twenty-six years that he was the pastor of the North 
End. His name clings to-day to St. Stephen's not- 
withstanding that twenty-seven years have elapsed 
since death ended his pastorate there. It is spoken 



LIFE OF FATHER 'hASKINS. 6/ 

with love and reverence still by the Catholics of the 
North End, who tell of the great good which the 
first pastor of St. Stephen's accomplished in that 
part of the town, and it will never be forgotten down 
in his parish as long as the church which he secured 
for Catholic worship lifts its historic tower in that 
section of the city. 

It may be added here that during his pastorate at 
St. John's, Father Haskins' \'enerable mother died, 
September 21st, 1849; while the following February 
lOth his sister Sarah was called to the other world. 
Mrs. Haskins was never received into the Catholic 
Church, but she had often declared her determina- 
tion to die a Catholic, and, writing in his diary on 
the day of her death, Father Haskins mentions that 
fact, and then adds: *'This consoles us in our great 
grief ; may she rest in peace." Father Haskins' 
father died on October 20th, 1853. "Never was a 
kinder and more affectionate father," we quote from 
his son's diary; "we all respected and dearly loved 
him." 



CHAPTER VI. 

father haskins at the north end pastor of st. 

John's — he contemplates the foundation of a boys' 
home pitiable condition of catholic waifs re- 
LIGIOUS INFLUENCES CAPTAIN SHURTLEFf's ACTION 

HIS DEATH — THE HOME IN MOON ST. COURT. 

THE care of his parish, located though that was 
in one of the sections of Boston where the Cath- 
olic element of the population was perhaps growing 
more rapidly than elsewhere, did not engross all of 
Father Haskins' thoughts in these early years of his 
ministry. During his experience as a Protestant 
minister, when, as we have already seen, he was 
•chaplain at industrial institutions, he had given the 
care of neglected and wayward boys no little study, 
and the more he considered the topic the more he 
became impressed with the conviction that an insti- 
tution in which this class of youth should be properly 
cared for and duly instructed in religious matters, 
would be productive of immense good in their be- 
half. His own uncertain position at this time, when 
he was wavering in his religious belief, prevented 
-him from pursuing this line of thought as far as he 
was disposed to do, and nothing practical, con- 
rsequently, then came of his consideration of it 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 69 

After he had found peace of mind, however, in the 
acceptance of Catholic truth, and, much more par- 
ticularly, after he had been ordained a priest, and 
installed as pastor in a quarter of Boston where 
every day, almost, furnished pitiable examples of 
neglected boys going from bad to worse, his old idea 
of establishing an institution for the reclamation of 
such lads as had begun to go astray, and the pres- 
ervation of others who were in danger of being 
tempted from the paths of virtue, came back to him 
with increased force. In one of his early annual 
reports, after he had actually put this idea of his 
into operation, Father Haskins tells us, as it were, 
what was the chief motive that impelled him to 
undertake the establishment of the House of the 
Angel Guardian. ''The want of a Catholic asylum 
for orphan and other boys," writes he in this report, 
"had long been felt. The hearts of pastors were 
continually moved by harrowing tales of the mis- 
conduct, desertion or orphanage of the little lambs 
of their flocks, but they had no consolations to offer 
no remedies to prescribe. Their natural guardians 
were unable or unfit to guide or train them, or else, 
houseless and friendless and Godless, they roamed 
at large till drawn in and swallowed by the insati- 
able vortex of misguided philanthropy : and when 
next we saw them they were in a prison or poor- 
house, in a seething cauldron of pauperism or of 



70 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

crime; lost to themselves, to their Church, to their 
country and their God." 

It is easy to imagine what painful impressions the 
consideration, day after day, joined with the vivid 
scenes which he saw about him, of such a situation as 
that portrayed above, made upon the sensitive, 
philanthropic and truly Catholic heart and soul of 
Father Haskins. There was at the time of which 
we are writing, not a single Catholic asylum for boys 
in all New England. The consequence was that 
whenever a wayward lad was brought before the 
courts, if he was sentto any reformatory, it was to one 
in which he was certain to be exposed to all sorts 
of dangers of losing, partly or wholly, his faith. In 
those days the doors of public institutions had not 
learned to open to Catholic clergymen — Thank 
heaven that there are few such institutions now in 
this part of the land at least, into which a priest may 
not claim entrance as a right I And not only were 
Catholic children in public institutions then deprived 
of the visits of their own clergymen ; they were 
systematically exposed to the proselytizing efforts 
of Protestant ministers. Father Haskins was fully 
aware of all these things. He had been behind the 
scenes, to use a familiar phrase, in the days when he 
was an Episcopalian minister, and he knew what 
dark and devious machinations were being worked to 
bring about the destruction of their faith in the hearts 
of Catholic children. "To aid in the work of perver- 



LIFE OF FATFIER HASKINS. 7\ 

sion," wrote he in the report already quoted from, 
''societies were formed to receive Catholic children 
and provide for them till a number should be collected 
sufficient to fill a car, when they would be steamed 
swiftly off to some western state and there sold, 
body and soul, to farmers and squatters. Mission- 
aries, both male and female, were hired to prowl 
about certain quarters of the city, to talk with chil- 
dren in the streets, hke the Manicheans of old, and 
invite and urge them to leave their f riend^and homes, 
picturing to them vistas of abundant food, clothes, 
and money. Sunday schools were opened, and 
teachers employed, to waylay children on their path 
to their own schools and bribe them into theirs. If 
pastors and teachers sought their missing lambs in 
these wolves' dens, they found unfriendly policemen 
at the doors to prevent them entering." 

Bostonians of the present day may find it difficult 
to imagine that such a condition of things as Father 
Haskins graphically portrays in these words was ever 
allowed in this city. But it was permitted, neverthe- 
less, and the foregoing passage by no means overdraws 
the picture. Perhaps the spirit which prompted such 
nefarious deeds is still at work here in Boston. 
Protestant proselytizers long since abandoned as 
useless their eftorts to wean away from the Catholic 
faith and Church the children of the Irish immigrants 
who came to Boston. They have never succeeded 
with our German Catholic children, who are carefully 



72 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

cared for by their own parents and priests. The few 
French-speaking people who were here in Father 
Haskins' day showed themselves proof against the 
wiles and bribes of these Protestant propagandists. 
But evidences are not lacking that much the same 
sort of pernicious work which Father Haskins saw in 
the first days of his ministry, attempted in the North 
End and other sections of the city, is being tried again 
here for the perversion of the children of our latest 
immigrants, the Polish-speaking, the Italian-talking 
youth, and those of other foreign parentage who have 
recently been added in such large numbers to our 
population. Father Haskins tells us that when young 
Captain Shurtleff, son of Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, of 
honored memory, who became a convert and in his 
new-born zeal undertook the charge of St. Mar3^'s 
Sunday School, in Endicott Street, on one occasion 
insisted upon entering a Protestant Sunday School 
into which he had good reasons for believing that 
some of St. Mary's children had been entrapped and 
were being detained, he was ignominiously arrested 
and marched through the streets to jail. And yet it 
was but a few years afterwards that all Boston turned 
out to honor this gallant young Catholic. For when 
the Civil War broke out, young Shurtleff was one of 
the first to volunteer for the defence of the Union 
and its institution. He went to the front and fell at 
the head of his troops whom he bravely led against 
the enemy. His body came back to Boston for 



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LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 73 

burial, and the whole town turned out to mourn his 
loss, and thousands followed his coffin on foot as it 
was taken up to the Church of the Immaculate Con- 
ception, where a Solemn Requiem Mass was sung 
for his soul. And yet not so many months before 
that Protestant Boston applauded the policeman 
who haled young ShurtlefT, gallant, noble heart as 
he was, through the streets to the lockup, for no 
violation of the law, to use Father Haskins' words in 
reference to the outrage, "but simply because he 
insisted on his right to search in a Protestant school 
of notorious proselyting character for some of his 
missing Catholic boys. " 

Of course, before he could make any move towards 
the establishment of a Catholic home for wayward 
or neglected boys, l-^ather Haskins had to consult 
with Bishop Fitzpatrick and secure his consent to 
the undertaking. The situation of affairs in the city, 
instead of mending, was constantly growing worse. 
Father Haskins had talked the subject over with 
several of his brother priests ; he had broached his 
ideas with regard to the founding of a Catholic home 
to influential Catholic laymen, and he had also 
suggested such an institution to the bishop as a 
much-needed one. He found all of the same mind 
as himself. It does not appear to have been his 
ambition, or even his desire at first, that he should be 
appointed the priest to undertake the building of such 
a Catholic institution. But he was everywhere 



74 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

recognized as the man best equipped for the work. 
No sooner, therefore, did Bishop Fitzpatrick authorize 
the movement than he named the pastor of St. John's 
as its manager. To give him a good start the 
bishop told him to come up to the Cathedral on a 
certain Sunday and announce from the pulpit what 
he contemplated doing, and then to ask the congre- 
ation to contribute, in God's name, to the inception 
of this sorely needed Catholic asylum. Father 
Haskins took the bishop at his word, and one may 
in a manner judge how eloquently and cogently he 
pleaded the cause of Catholic youth from the fact 
that the Cathedral collection amounted to $1,700, 
atruly magnificent sum, all circumstances considered. 
Father Haskins was delighted beyond measure. 
" God was with us, " said he afterwards in referring 
to those days. '^ God was with us ; clergymen vied 
with each other in opening their churches to me, 
and in a few months I had five thousand dollars in 
hand. " 

With that amount of money to start with, 
Father Haskins at once went to work. He secured 
a rather small, but otherwise good, frame building 
in Moon Street Court, adjoining his church and 
residence, and fitted it up so that. he had accommo- 
dations, such as they were, for thirty-five boys. It did 
not take him long to find lads enough to fill this first 
House of the Angel Guardian. But so eager was he 
to rescue certain Catholic youths whom he knew to 



LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 75 

be detained in Protestant or public institutions, that 
as soon as he had his beds set up he visited the 
aforesaid pubhc institutions, took the names of the 
CathoHc inmates, and, after talking with the lads 
themselves, he offered the directors of public 
institutions to relieve them of the duty and cost of 
supporting the Catholic boys in future. "I was not 
unknown to those gentlemen," said Father Haskins 
in a subsequent allusion to his experience on the oc- 
casion. •*! was no visiting enthusiast, nor mad 
philanthropist. I had been ten years in the employ of 
the city as superintendent of the House of Industry, 
of the Boylston Asylum and of the House of Ref- 
ormation. Yet my generous petition, which would 
have relieved the taxpayers of Boston of a burden, 
was rejected. The boys were Catholics; so was I; 
but they were coldly and uncivilly refused to me, 
•whereas had some broken-down tradesman turned 
missionary, applied for the lads, he would have been 
given them and thanked for his services in relieving 
the public of the cost of their further maintenance. 

In one sense, perhaps, it was well for the infant 
home that the directors of public institutions refused 
Father Haskins' request in this matter. Had they 
granted his petition and given him the boys he 
asked for, he would not have been able to accept 
the others who were soon brought, or who came to 
him, for admission into his institution. If he ever 
42ntertained any misgivings about the necessity and 



^6 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

utility of such an establishment, such doubts must- 
have been all dispelled in the very first days of the 
existence of the little shelter in Moon Street Court. 
He was overrun with applicants for admission to his 
refuge, and he was reluctantly obliged to bid some 
wait until a place became vacant for them, or until 
he had secured a larger building for his home. The 
throng of applicants who came to him m those days 
— and many of whom were brought by parents who 
were both able and willing to pay for the care and 
tuition of their boys — decided Father Haskins to- 
make the character of his home such that while it 
sheltered free of all cost, depending upon the gen- 
erosity of the Catholic public, boys who could not 
contribute anything for their maintenance, or whose 
parents could not do so, a certain sum, the amount 
thereof to be determined by circumstances, should 
be expected from those who were able to pay. It 
may be that this was somewhat of a departure from 
his first ideals, and it is probably true that he once 
entertained the notion of establishing a free shelter 
for homeless, orphan and destitute boys. But if he 
did so, the class of boys who were brought to him' 
in the first days of the asylum in Moon Street Court 
compelled him to change his views and alter his 
plans. Here is his own account of his experience 
at that time : "Few came except they were brought 
by parents or near relations, and we soon had such 
clamorous crowds of these that we were utterly con- 



LIFE OF FATHER ITASKINS. 77 

fused. We also soon discovered that the most 
urgent applicants were not the most needy. On the 
contrary, nearly all such had means enough, and 
brought their children to us because they could not 
manage them at home. They would not attend 
school, they showed dispositions which, unless they 
were checked, would surely get them into trouble 
with the officials of the law, etc., etc. In this unfore- 
seen emergency, it was a serious question what to 
do. However, I at once sought the counsel of the 
bishop, as had been my invariable practice when any 
new step became necessary. He advised that we 
should follow the plan of the directors of St. 
Vincent's Asylum for girls, which was worthily con- 
ducted by the good Sisters of Charity, and by virtue 
of which plan a certain sum of money was asked 
for the maintenance, weekly or monthly, of each 
inmate. The bishop's counsel was adopted, and 
tuition was tixed at the same rate as that of the 
wards of St. Vincent's Asylum." The wisdom of 
the advice which Bishop Fitzpatrick gave the House 
of the Angel Guardian, at this juncture, was speedily 
/demonstrated. Father Haskins often declared that 
the bishop's plan insured the success and the use- 
fulness of his establishment. "Parents and near 
relatives of waywardly disposed lads," said he, "a 
lonely father, unable to give his motherless children 
the care they should receive, a bereaved mother 
whose boys were going astray because they had no 



78 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

father's voice to counsel, guide and restrain them, 
felt glad and proud that there was at length an 
asylum, a boarding school wherein, removed from 
vicious associates and corrupting influences, these 
boys could be placed, and be sure of receiving 
Christian training and instruction. True, they were 
poor ; but they thanked God that they were not re- 
duced to the necessity of asking alms. It gave them 
a certain sense of wholesome independence to re- 
flect that they were able to pay something for their 
children's keeping and teaching, even if the amount 
they did pay w^as in some instances very small. 
Then, too, the knowledge that his board was paid 
had a good effect upon the boy who was placed 
with us. He came into our Home with something 
of the pride of the lad who starts for college. He 
knows that no one can ever twit him in after life 
of having been brought up in a charity school, which, 
strange though it may be, is sometimes made a re- 
proach by people who should know better than to 
consider it such. It matters little to the boy what 
the sum is that is paid for his board, whether it be 
a dollar or five dollars a week. He knows that he is 
being paid for, and that knowledge gives him moral 
independence and self-respect. In after life, as w^e 
have abundant means of knowing, our boys feel 
proud of their alma mater, for such our institution 
aims to be to all its inmates — and it is their proud- 
est boast that they were once pupils of the House 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 79 

of the Angel Guardian. That alone is a very signi- 
ficant fact, and it demonstrates the wisdom of the 
advice which Bishop Fitzpatrick gave and which we 
followed — when he counselled us to ask a certain 
sum for the support of each applicant whom we 
received into the institution." 

Of course, with all the other work which he had 
to attend to in those days, Father Haskins found it 
necessary to engage some one to act as superinten- 
dent of the little Home in Moon Street Court. His 
choice fell upon Mr. Cornelius Murphy, a worthy 
member of his parish, who, with his big hearted and. 
industrious wife, looked after Father Haskins' boys 
as well as they could in the narrow quarters in w^hich 
the lads were domiciled. Two years after he opened 
his first Home, Father Haskins managed to add some- 
what to its accommodations. He secured buildings 
in North Square and turned them over to the use of 
his boys; but they, too, soon proved inadequate. 
He had more than a hundred applicants waiting to 
be admitted to the institution, but there was no 
prospect of their reception. "The buildings we 
occupied," said the good founder, speaking of this 
period of its history, "would never be sufficient to 
accommodate a hundred boys. The yards were 
scarcely large enough for a quarter of that number. 
We had already about ninety, and we could not find 
room for more. Crowded as they were, it was 
impossible for the boys to take the recreation and 



80 LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 

exercises so essential to them. Yet applications for 
admission were pouring in every day — many of them 
of the most urgent and distressing character — and it 
was a most painful duty to refuse them because we 
had no room. There were no suitable class-rooms 
or dormitories, nor kitchen, nor cellar, nor store- 
room, nor clothing-room, nor laundry, nor baths — 
so important to health — but all our hundred boys 
were literally huddled together in contracted and 
stifled apartments ; and the wonder was they were so 
contented and healthy." Father Haskins recognized 
that better quarters were imperatively demanded, 
and he was of the opinion, too, that it would be far 
better for all concerned if he could secure a place 
for his asylum and school outside of the crowded 
section of the city. When he broached that idea 
to Bishop Fitzpatrick, that good and wise prelate at 
once approved of his plan, and advised him to go 
out to Roxbury, then outside of Boston, and see what 
he could do out there in the line of securing a place 
for his institution. It was now 1858 ; the House of 
the Angel Guardian had been in existence seven 
years, and with its limited facilities it had been the 
means of accomplishing a vast amount of good. God 
had surely been with it from the start. He was with 
it still, and it was He Who guided Father Haskins' 
feet to the present site of the institution when, in 
compliance with the bishop's counsel, the godd 
founder went out Roxburywards in search of a new 



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LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 8 I 

location for the Home. We may mention here, in 
closing this chapter, that four years before he visited 
Roxbury for the above stated purpose — that is to 
say in 1854 — Father Haskins accompanied Bishop 
Fitzpatrick to Rome; and while abroad he paid 
visits to a large number of juvenile institutions in 
France and Italy. The ItaHan institutions — in partic- 
ular the noble institutes of San Michele, Santa Maria 
degli Angeli and Tata Giovanni, in Rome, made 
deep and lasting impressions upon him ; and from 
an exhibition which he witnessed in the last named 
establishment he probably got the idea of forming 
that organization which subsequently became so well 
and favorably known to New England Catholics, — 
Father Raskin's boys — whose concerts were so de- 
lightful to the young folks of half a century ago and 
so liberally patronized by their elders. It was on the 
eve of St. Patrick's Day, 1855, that Father Haskins' 
boys, who had been carefully trained in the musical 
parts of their programme by the organist of the 
Cathedral, the good Mr. Anthony Werner, gave 
their first exhibition in Tremont Temple, here in 
Boston. They had a magnificent audience, fully 
three thousand in number, and within the next nine 
years the boys, by similar performances in Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, had netted 
about $10,000 for the Home, a very creditable sum 
considering the time in which the concerts were 
given. In justice to Father Haskins' memory it 

6 



82 LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 

should be recorded — though such action on his part 
was only just what might be expected from a man 
of his character — that he turned into the treasury 
of the House of the Angel Guardian all the money 
which came to, and belonged to him personally, as 
pastor of St. Stephen's and St. Francis de Sales' 
congregations. The latter congregation was a Rox- 
bury one which grew up about his home when that 
was established in the Highland district, and which 
attended services first in an old church on Ruggles 
Street, and when that was burned, worshipped in the 
Chapel of the House of the Angel Guardian up to 
1867, when, on Father Haskins' advice, they under- 
took to build a new church and Bishop Williams 
sent Father Sherwood Healy to them as their pastor. 




HOUSE OF THE ANGEL GUARDIAN. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MOVE TO ROXBURV THE SITE OF THE HOME AND ITS 

PURCHASE PLANS MADE FOR THE BUILDING LAYING 

THE CORNER STONE THE DEDICATION OF THE NEW 

HOUSE OF THE ANGEL GUARDIAN FATHER HASKINS' 

JOY A NOBLE AND GRAND STRUCTURE. 

FATHER HASKINS was fortunate in securing 
for the permanent site of the House of the Angel 
Guardian the admirable location which it still oc- 
cupies. This ground, which fronts two hundred 
feet on Vernon Street, one of the pleasantest in the 
Highland district, extends northward to Ruggles 
Street, five hundred feet away ; and for the one 
hundred thousand square feet contained in it the 
owners asked $30,000. Father Haskins lost no 
time in closing with the offer to sell on these terms, 
though he had not $30, let alone $30,000, at the 
time to pay for the land. But he knew the money 
would be speedily forthcoming. He was perfectly 
well convinced that the Catholics of Boston and New 
England appreciated hi? institution, recognized its 
need of better quarters, and would stand by him in 
his purchase of the Roxbury site. Nor was he dis- 
appointed in his expectations. As soon as he had 
closed the bargains with the Norfolk County Lead 



o4 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

Company, which owned the land, he issued an ap- 
peal to the Catholic Community for subscriptions to 
ipay for the land. One paragraph of his appeal ran 
as follows : "Fellow Catholics of Boston and vicinity : 
In announcing to you the purchase of this most de- 
i,sirable and extensive lot, I have also to announce 
that of the $30,000 cost of it nothing has yet been 
paid. It has been purchased on credit; not mine, 
but yours. Will you now endorse my act? Will 
you say 'Go on ! we will aid you ! You shall have the 
money?' You can do so if you will. Do it, and 
the asylum erected on this lot will then be yours. 
It will be a glorious heritage for your children and 
your children's children. Many a father will you 
make glad in this, that he can find in your asylum a 
house of religious discipline and instruction for his 
wayward or rebellious boy, by the payments of a 
pension within his humble means. Many a widowed 
mother's heart will leap for joy when she learns that 
she can place her fatherless son in charge of its 
Guardian Angel while she is earning the means of 
his and her own support. Many an orphaned and 
deserted child will you rescue from perdition, tem- 
poral and eternal, by providing here a shelter and a 
Tiome where the humane and munificent may place 
.and educate him for usefulness and for heaven.'' 
The answer to this eloquent and moving appeal was 
as prompt as it was generous. Money literally 
ipoured in upon the good founder, and the conse- 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 85 

quence was that within a few months he had the 
happiness of paying in full for the lot and accepting 
from its former owners a deed which invested the 
title of the property in the trustees of the House of 
Angel Guardian. Then Father Haskins laid his 
ideas of what sort of a building he wanted before 
that prince of Catholic artists, P. C. Keely, of Brook- 
lyn, and requested him to draw plans for the 
proposed building. Mr. Keely did so, his plans were 
accepted, and then preparations were made for the 
laying of the cornerstone of the new House of the 
Angel Guardian. 

It was on the afternoon of a lovely Sunday in the 
spring of 1859, on May 15, that Father Haskins had 
the happiness of beholding the cornerstone of his 
cherished institution laid in accordance with the 
ceremonies prescribed in the Roman ritual ; and 
who can doubt that the measure of his joy was full 
on that occasion ! He himself has told us that it 
was a proud day for him and for his beloved boys. In 
his imagination he already saw the stately building 
which he had planned, reared above the foun- 
dation stone, and beheld the cross glittering above it 
against the blue of the sky. He saw the various 
rooms which he had arranged within the capacious 
structure filled with inmates, all attending to their 
various works and duties, and he almost imagined 
himself standing at the altar of the chapel and sing- 
ing a Mass of Thanksgiving for the fruition of his 



36 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

dearest earthly hopes. In preparation for the cer- 
emony of the laying of the cornerstone, a mammoth 
tent had been stretched over the entire site of the 
proposed building, that is to say, the portion of the 
Roxbury lot which was to be covered by the House 
of the Angel Guardian. People flocked to the place 
from all parts of the city and from the suburban 
towns. The daily papers of the following day de- 
clared that there were ten thousand people within 
the tent wherein the services were held. The Met- 
ropolitan Horse Railroad Company told Father 
Haskins that they had carried fifteen thousand folks 
out to Roxbury that May Sunday. He himself 
asserts that fully six thousand paid the quarter of a 
dollar admission to enter the tent. The music on the 
occasion was furnished by the full band of the bo3'S of 
the House of the Angel Guardian. Bishop Fitzpatrick 
officiated at the laying of the cornerstone, and a 
large number of priests from Boston and vicinity 
were also in attendance. The sermon on the occa- 
sion was delivered by the Rev. J. W. Cummings, D. 
D., pastor of St. Stephen's Church, New York City, 
who was accounted one of the very best Catholic 
pulpit orators of the day in this country. This rev- 
erend orator dwelt at length upon the necessity of 
such institutions as the House of the Angel Guar- 
dian for the preservation of Catholic boys, he told of 
the great benefits which were certain to result from 
their establishment, he congratulated the Catholics 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 87 

of Boston and New England upon the admirable 
home whose cornerstone the bishop had that day 
placed in position and whose completion he urged 
them to hasten by their generous contributions. In 
one portion of his eloquent address Dr. Cummings 
mentioned as one class of lads whom the House of 
the Angel Guardian would shelter and save those 
who were in danger of falling into crime and disgrace. 
Father Haskins, to whom the good name of his in- 
stitution was particularly dear, felt apprehensive lest 
this allusion of the reverend orator might be mis- 
interpreted by some people. Hence in the brief 
account which he gave the public afterwards of the 
cornerstone laying, we find this passage: "Con- 
firmed criminals or professed thieves we never 
receive. Their conversation and example would be 
more pernicious to others than the restraints and 
teachings of the institution would be beneficial to 
themselves. And it should not be inferred that the 
class of boys to whom Dr. Cummings alluded is a 
dominant, or even a large proportion of our lads. 
The House of the Angel Guardian is the only asylum 
for orphan boys in the diocese. Hence we have al- 
ways our full proportion of orphans. More than 
two-thirds of our boys have lost one or both parents, 
and if these boys had, in some instances, been 
truants or petty offenders, it was rather for want of a 
friendly voice to cheer them, and a steady hand to 
guide them, than in consequence of a love of idle 



88 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

ness or mischief. A large number, again, are fine 
intelligent lads of irreproachable moral character 
and of poor, but respectable parents, who wish that 
their sons should have an education away from home, 
and who seek for them a cheap boarding school, such 
as the House of the Angel Guardian offers, where, 
under the influences of religious training and a mild, 
firm rule, they may be properly fitted for the battle 
of life." The good founder was ever solicitous lest 
the true character of his institution and that of the 
boys whom it sheltered should be misunderstood ; 
and hence whenever he thought that such misunder- 
standing was in danger of arising he, very properly, 
hastened to state the real aim and true character of 
his foundation ; and he never lost an opportunity to 
stand up and speak for his beloved boys. 

After the cornerstone had been laid by Bishop 
Fitzpatrick, the work of erecting the building went 
rapidly forward. Father Haskins did not hesitate to 
incur indebtedness, for he knew that the Catholics of 
New England would come to his assistance and help 
him to meet his obligations in time. He had tested 
their liberality more than once, and he had no mis- 
givings on that score. The year i860 saw the House 
of the Angel Guardian built and ready for occupancy 
by the boys in whose behalf it had been erected. 
Who can tell the delight of the zealous founder as 
he saw the completion of his building? What senti- 
ments of joy, of pride, of gratitude must have filled 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 89 

his heart as he went through the roomy corridors 
into the various spacious rooms, there for classes, 
there for other purposes, mounted the broad stair- 
cases, up even to the dormitories, capable of 
accommodating upwards of three hundred beds with- 
out the slightest crowding, or descended to the great 
refectory around whose tables four hundred lads 
could be seated with comfort. What a change all 
this was, and what a delightful change, too, from the 
close, cribbed, cabined and confined quarters of the 
Home at the North End ! Then, too, at Roxbury 
the boys had a magnificent play-ground — at the 
other end of the city they had none at all — covering 
an acre of ground and walled about so as to insure 
the lads freedom from outside disturbance ; while on 
days when the weather would not permit of out- 
door exercise or sports, there was an inside play 
room for them to gambol in to their hearts' content. 
Light and ventilation were assured through all the 
building by the spacious quadrangle formed by its 
walls, and this court also enabled the lads to take 
their Sunday recreation in its enclosure. The chapel 
was in many respects the gem of the whole structure, 
as it was eminently proper that it should be. It was 
built in arched Gothic style; measured 130 feet in 
length, with the ceiling 25 feet above the floor, and 
frescoed beautifully ; the windows were of stained 
glass, and a congregation numbering a thousand souls 
could kneel within it and assist at Mass. Taken all 



90 LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 

in all, the House of the Angel Guardian, when 
opened its doors for the first time to its inmates, 
nearly fifty years ago now, was certainly a magnifi- 
cent and admirable institution ; one of which its 
worthy founder might well be very proud, and its 
inmates grateful for the shelter, care and education 
which they were to receive within its walls. 

As soon as all things had been gotten in readiness 
at the new House of the Angel Guardian the boys 
who had been cared for as best they could be cared 
for under the conditions attaching to the old home 
at the North End, were transferred thither by Father 
Haskins. It must have been a glad day for the 
venerable founder when he saw the half hundred 
lads with which he began his philanthropic work at 
the Roxbury institution, pass through the open por- 
tals of the new institution to take possession of the 
place. How he must have rejoiced when he saw the 
joyous astonishment on each lad's countenance as the 
grandeur, the beauty and the splendid facilities of 
the new House of the Angel Guardian were unfolded 
before his gaze ! With what laudable and excusable 
exultation must he not have thrilled when he listened 
to the glad shouts of the youngsters as they took 
possession of the spacious playground and at once 
proceeded to test its fitness for their favorite games ! 
And how his soul must have been filled with grati- 
tude to God and with thanksgiving to the generous 
Catholics of Boston and New England who had en 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 9 1 

abled him to erect this splendid new institution 
when he gathered his boys in the chapel and with 
them rendered his thanks to Heaven for the favors 
which had been showered upon them and him ! We 
can readily imagine the supreme happiness of the 
good founder and his beloved boys in the first days 
of their dwelling at the new House of the Angel 
Guardian when they were familiarizing themselves 
with the place and continually discovering new ex- 
cellences and beauties in the splendid structure and 
its surroundings. But the House of the Angel 
Guardian, all magnificent though it was in its pro- 
portions and equipments, had its work to accomplish. 
Its inmates, from the rector down, had all their 
duties to attend to ; and Father Haskins was not 
long in getting the machinery of the institution in 
full and regular operation. Numerous as had pre- 
viously been the applicants for admission to the 
home, their number increased rapidly after it was 
known that Father Haskins had taken possession of 
the new House of the Angel Guardian. Then, too, 
there were numerous visitors, all of whom were gladly 
welcomed, who called to see the new institution, and 
Father Haskins and his aids always took a large and 
genuine pleasure in showing such callers through 
the building and letting them see for themselves 
just how things were managed ; how the boys were 
treated and in what occupations they spent their 
time. It may not be out of place to remark here 



92 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

that visitors to the House of the Angel Guardian 
have ever since been cordially welcomed and gladly 
shown over and through the institution. Indeed, 
it may truly be said that the present management is 
never more pleased than when friends of the in- 
stitution, or any persons desirous of learning its 
character, call and request to be shown through the 
home. The Brothers have nothing to conceal from' 
the public gaze, nothing is there in or about their 
institution, its conduct, its rules, its management 
or its work which the Brothers prefer not to be seen. 
On the contrary, conscious of the excellence of their 
institution, certain of the wise and kind character of 
its rules, thoroughly aware of the vast amount of 
good it is doing and the far greater good it could 
accomplish were its resources larger, they are de- 
lighted to show everything and all things about the 
place to persons who honor them by calling at the 
home. Nothing gives them greater pleasure than 
to conduct such callers through the building from 
the ground floor to the highest story ; to let them 
see with their own eyes where the boys study, where 
they work, where they play, eat, sleep, etc., and 
how they pass each hour of the day. They want 
the public to know all there is to be known about the 
House of the Angel Guardian, to learn for them- 
selves who the religious are that manage it and how 
they do their work ; who are the boys that are 
sheltered and cared for and educated within its 



LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 93 

ivalls, and how they are treated, what studies they 
pursue and what useful callings they are trained in 
and taught ; and when persons call with these ob- 
jects in view, the pleasure of the Brothers in showing 
them through the home is as great and genuine 
as was that of Father Haskins when he conducted 
his first visitors through the fine building which he 
took possession of with his boys nearly forty years 
ago now. 

In a report which he issued a few years after he 
had taken possession of the new building Father 
Haskins said of it: "The House of the Angel 
Guardian has, under the fostering care and guid- 
ance of the Right Reverend Bishop, under the 
patronage of and encouragement of the Reverend 
Clergy and with the aid of the generous offerings o 
the Catholic community, become a permanent insti- 
tution of the diocese. Henceforth, to the end of 
time, there will be in the diocese of Boston an asy- 
lum, a refuge and a home for its orphaned, deserted 
and wayward boys, in which they may not only be 
sheltered from the blasts and temptations of a peri- 
lous world, but wherein they may also be instructed 
in their duties to God, to their fellows and to them- 
selves. All the property of the institution, real 
and personal, is vested in the board of trustees, who, 
in 1853, obtained from the Legislature an act of 
incorporation for the home. The Bishop (now Arch- 
bishop) of the diocese is cx-officio^ the president of 



94 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

this board, and is in all things the head of the 
whole establishment. He appoints as rector whom 
he pleases. He removes him at his pleasure. As 
it is of the utmost importance to the success of such 
an asylum that its prosperity, or adversity, should in 
no way depend upon the life or even the ability of 
any one individual and his salaried assistants ; and as 
it is of vital importance that its government should 
be permanent and self-perpetuating, and not liable 
to experimental or capricious changes, it has ever 
been, and it still is my hope and daily prayer that 
the Holy Ghost will inspire or raise up some re- 
ligious order of Priests or Brothers who will assume 
direction of the House of the Angel Guardian and un- 
dertake all the responsibilities of its management." 
From the very outset of his undertaking the work 
which the House of the Angel Guardian accom- 
plishes, its zealous and far-seeing founder had 
cherished the idea of securing for its management 
the members of a religious community. He knew 
that such management was the one best adapted for 
an institution like his. Nay, more, he was convinced 
that such management w^as absolutely necessary if 
the House of the Angel Guardian was to take the 
place which he desired to see it occupying, and to 
do the work which he hoped to see it performing. 
A diocesan priest, especially one charged as he was 
with the care of a parish, could not give to the home 
that undivided attention and constant supervision 



LIFE OF FAIHER HASKINS. 95 

which were absolutely necessary for it. True, he 
might employ others to take his place ; but he had 
to depend upon laymen in that case, and however 
willing and earnest such employers might be, they 
lacked qualifications which Father Haskins deemed, 
and rightly deemed, essential for the proper per- 
formance of their duties. Again, he felt that the 
management of such an institution as the House of 
the Angel Guardian should be of a permanent and 
self-perpetuating character, and not contingent upon 
the tenure of office or length of life of any one 
individual. When changes occur in the head man- 
agement of any institution, they are generally followed 
by others in its subordinate places. Such changes 
sometimes change the whole policy whereby the 
institution is governed ; and such sweeping altera- 
tions seldom, if ever, benefit the institution itself. 
Very often they work it grievous harm, and they 
may even put an end to its existence or, at least, to 
its usefulness. Dear as was the House of the 
Angel Guardian and its future to Father Haskins, 
he gave much thought to these things ; and the more 
he considered them the more firmly did he become 
convinced of the absolute need of a religious com- 
munity to undertake the conduct of his home. 
That convection came to him with greatly increased 
force after he had taken possession of the Roxbury 
buildings. The new House of the Angel Guardian 
was now a great institution, and it was daily taking 



96 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

on greater importance, and, consequently, demand- 
ing greater attention from its head. Father Haskins 
performed wonders in its behalf ; but he was pain- 
fully aware that the House of the Angel Guardian 
demanded more than he or any individual priest 
could do for it. Though he did not live to see his 
hope of beholding his beloved institution managed, 
as he wished it to be, by the members of a religious 
community, the good founder did not neglect any 
opportunity of securing such management that 
offered itself during his life-time. It was principally 
in the hope of securing Brothers for the home that 
Father Haskins went to Europe in 1854, with Bishop 
Fitzpatrick ; but his quest then proved unavailing, 
for he could find no community which was willing 
and able to assume the management of the home. 
Having learned later on, that in the early sixties, 
when Very Rev. Brother Gregory was superior- 
general of the Brothers of Charity, that a house of 
that order had been opened at Montreal, P. Q., 
Father Haskins journeyed to Canada and besought 
the Brothers of Charity there to send some of their 
number to Boston and assume the direction of the 
House of the Angel Guardian. But the Canadian 
Brothers had all they could do to perform at Montreal. 
Their foundation there was at that time only in its 
infancy, and they could spare none of their members 
for any other work. Father Haskins pleaded his 
cause very earnestly and very eloquently. But the 




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LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 97 

Brothers were powerless ; they could not then come 
to his aid, and he had to come back to Boston with- 
out having secured the object for which he went to 
Canada. 

For the next five years or so, Father Haskins 
searched the various other places in this country for 
a religious community which would be w^illing to 
assume the charge of the House of the Angel 
Guardian. But all his efforts were fruitless. The re- 
ligious communities which he applied to had all the 
work they were capable of doing with the men they 
possessed, and they could not, therefore, think of 
accepting any new responsibilities. Father Haskins 
was disappointed, of course, by these successive 
failures to secure Brothers for his institution, but he 
was by no means discouraged ; neither did he give 
over his quest for a religious community willing to 
relieve him of the responsibilities of the House of 
the Angel Guardian. He was getting on in years, 
too, and while his zeal increased, his physical activ- 
ities were no longer as large as in the first days of 
his priesthood ; and his inability to do all that he 
desired to perform for his beloved boys made him 
all the more anxious and eager to secure for his 
home the management which he so ardently desired 
for it. The bishop was as eager as Father Haskins 
himself to see the House of the Angel Guardian 
placed in the keeping of [a religious order, and the 
eagerness of both prelate and priest increased as the 

7 



98 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

years went by. After the repeated efforts which 
were made to secure such a community for the home 
among the various religious estabhshments on this 
side of the water had failed, Bishop Frtzpatrick told 
Father Haskins that he should go abroad again and 
look in Europe for a Brotherhood willing to take the 
institution off his hands, intimating that he might 
perhaps succeed better on this trip than he did in 
1854. Father Haskins, who always regarded his 
bishop's faintest wish as a command, lost no time in 
getting ready for the trans-Atlantic voyage ; and al- 
though he did not meet with success on the trip, so 
far as getting Brothers for the home, he had some 
interesting and instructive experiences abroad, some 
of which deserve mention and are, therefore, em- 
bodied in the following chapter. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FATHER HASKINS GOES TO EUROPE AGAIN IN QUEST OF 

BROTHERS HIS STAY IN IRELAND AND HIS WELCOME 

THERE HE CROSSES TO LIVERPOOL AND LONDON, 

•WHERE HE MEETS OLD FRIENDS HIS VISIT TO BELGIUM 

AND HIS EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF THE HOUSE OF THE 
ANGEL GUARDIAN THERE. 

ON his third and last trip across the Atlantic 
Father Haskins sailed on the Inman liner, City 
^f Paris, Captain Mirehouse, and the date of his 
•departure from Sandy Hook was April 15, 187 1. 
Ten days later he reached Queenstown, and pro- 
ceeded at once to the Victoria Hotel, Cork. There 
lie made the acquaintance of Father Maguire, a 
brother of the well-known Irish parliamentarian, 
John Francis Maguire, who wrote an excellent work 
on Rome, its Rulers and its Institutions^ and also 
the Life of Father Mathew, Father Maguire 
acted the cicerone to Father Haskins, and took him 
all over *'the rebel city," showing him its churches, 
its religious institutions and its other points of inter- 
est. One of the visits which the two priests made 
merits a place in these pages, inasmuch as it gives 
us an insight into the good work which the pastor 
of St. Stephen's was always unostentatiously doing 



100 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

when opportunity offered, and also illustrates the 
grateful character of the Irish heart. We will let 
Father Haskins describe the visit himself, merely 
saying that, with characteristic modesty, he refrains,, 
in the description which he gives us of it, from say- 
ing anything of the encouragement and material- 
assistance which he gave to the two young men 
mentioned in the narrative. *'We then drove," says 
Father Haskins, in describing this visit which he 
made in Cork, *'to another quarter of the city quite 
different from Patrick Street, yet it may be happier. 
This quarter was inhabited by the poor, and an old 
friend of mine, John Crowley, lived there, at No 23 
New Lane. He was a tailor and an honest man, 
and a good Catholic. Twenty-three years ago two 
of his sons had emigrated to Boston. They were 
then young men, who learned the printing trade,, 
and I made their acquaintance. They obtained 
positions, and the old man heard of it. He wrote 
me several letters, and we had corresponded, either 
by letter or exchange of newspaper, ever since. We 
reached the foot of the lane. It ran up a pretty 
steep hill ; but the lane was so narrow that we were 
obliged to descend from our carriage and walk up to 
the house, which was on the top of the hill. We went; 
in. The tailor's bench was there, but it was empty. 
The old woman's arm-chair, that, too, was empty. 
A young woman sat at the window, looking out-r — 
she kept a little shop for the sale of cakes, apples,. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 1 01 

etc. Father Maguire, who was the first to enter, 
said : 'Kate, here's a priest from America who has 
come to see you !' At that Kate sprang forward, 
exclaiming, 'And is it Father Haskins?' We were 
four in the party, and I was surprised that she should 
single me out, but she did. I had visited her father 
seventeen years before, and I presume that she re- 
membered me. Laughing and crying at the same 
time, she exclaimed : 'Oh, yes it is, — it is Father 
Haskins.' Then sobbing and wringing her hands, 
she sank into a chair while she said : 'Oh, Father 
Haskins dear, my poor father is dead ! He died in 
January last; and my good mother, she, too, has 
passed away.* Then, when her grief had in a 
measure subsided, she stood up and looked more 
closely at me. The recollections which came back 
to her mind at the sight of her father's friend, again 
caused her to burst into tears. At length, however, 
she became more calm, talked a while with us all 
and, as we were preparing to leave, she besought us 
to pray for her father's and mother's repose. When 
we had spoken good-bye, and quitted the house, 
Kate followed us out and pointing me out to the 
neighbors, told them that I was Father Haskins from 
America. Children swarmed out of the houses, men 
and women thrust their heads from opened windows, 
boys in crowds escorted us down the lane, Kate lead- 
ing the van, and ever and anon exclaiming, 'There 
he is I there he is !' She was as proud as a queen, 



102 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

and I never had such an ovation tendered me before. 
I could have embraced all the good folks that sought 
to honor us, and they actually seemed to me like so 
many old friends and parishioners." 

The various charitable and industrial institutions 
of the Catholic cities which he visited naturally had 
a great attraction for Father Haskins, who visited as 
many of them as he could, with a view of seeing how 
they compared with the House of the Angel Guardian, 
upon what principles they were conducted ; and to 
note also if there were any features in their 
methods and management which could be introduced 
into his own cherished establishment with advan- 
tage to it and its inmates. Nor did he confine his 
visits and observation wholly to Catholic institutions. 
He inspected many government institutions. In the 
Catholic Schools he sometimes addressed the boys, 
telling them of the House of the Angel Guardian, 
his dear boys and their famous band. When he did 
that at St. Patrick's Reformatory, at Upton, outside of 
Cork, ''The boys," he tells us, "threw their caps in the 
air, and gave us three times three cheers — but no 
tiger; they had not learned that." From Cork 
he went to Dublin, and then to Artane, to inspect the 
Industrial School which the Irish Christian Brothers 
manage there. This is the order, it may be mentioned 
here, which for a few years had charge of the parish 
school of St. John's Church, Worcester, in this state ; 
but which subsequently relinquished their duties 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. lOJ. 

there and returned to Ireland. While at Dublin he 
visited the famous missionary College of All Hallows, 
at Drumcondra, which was then presided over by 
Very Rev. Dr. Fortune; and also the beautiful 
Glasnevin Cemetery, where he knelt by Daniel 
O'Connell's grave and breathed a prayer for his 
repose and the welfare of the land the great Libera- 
tor loved so dearly. The government training school, 
in Phenix Park, for boys whose fathers had been killed 
or disabled in the service of the Queen, greatly 
interested Father Haskins, because of the admir- 
able discipline that is maintained in it, but more per- 
haps for the reason that, in addition to the Protestant 
chapel and chaplain, he found there a Catholic 
chapel served by a Catholic chaplain, paid by the 
government. "Mark that !" wrote he in his little work 
Si.Y Weeks Abroad. "Is not that liberality, wisdom, 
justice on the part of the British Government? How 
long will it be before the American Congress enacts 
a law requiring the employment of paid Roman 
Catholic chaplains in her arsenals, navy yards and 
military schools?" That law is yet to be enacted; 
but, despite the oppositions of bigotry and prejudice, 
matters are somewhat better than they were in 
Father Haskins' days. We Catholics have a few 
army and navy chaplains ; but nothing like the 
number which the proportion of Catholics in the 
United States army and navy call for. 

From Ireland Father Haskins passed over to 



I04 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS.l 

England and he was very much interested in the 
large number of Irish emigrants who were passengers 
across with him, enroute for America ; for his ex- 
perience as a priest in Boston had imbued him with 
a warm sympathy with the faithful children of St. 
Patrick, to whose loyalty to their Church and re- 
ligion, and to whose many other virtues he frequently 
paid tribute both in his public utterances and his 
written words. At Liverpool he anticipated the 
pleasure of renewing acquaintance with Right Rev. 
Alexander Goss, the bishop of that English See, 
whom he had known as a student in Rome ; but the 
bishop was away on an official visitation. The 
vicar-general of the diocese, Very Rev. Dr. Fisher, 
however, welcomed him in the bishop's name, and 
when he learned of Father Haskins' desire to visit the 
boys' institutions of Liverpool, the vicar-general sent 
one of the ecclesiastical students of the diocese with 
him to introduce him to the managers of those es- 
tablishments. Our good founder had the pleasure 
of visiting several of the Catholic orphanages and 
boys' schools of Liverpool, some of which impressed 
him favorably, while others he considered inferior in 
certain respects to his own House of the Angel 
Guardian. Among the Liverpool establishments 
which Father Haskins inspected was the one which 
was managed by Rev. James Nugent, or to call him 
by his present title, Mgr. Nugent, who is so well 
and so favorably known now in this country, which 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. IO5 

he has since visited many times. Father Haskins 
recognized in Mgr. Nugent on this occasion that 
remarkable will and energy which have enabled him 
to accomplish so much good since for the homeless 
and neglected boys of Liverpool. 

At London, whither he went from Liverpool, 
Father Haskins met several Irish bishops, among 
others Bishop Dorrian of the united dioceses of 
Down and Connor ; and he found at Southwark, a 
London district, an old Roman fellow student in 
Bishop Danell, who was then the head of the South- 
wark diocese. He visited the training school for 
Catholic teachers in the national schools, which was 
then located at Hammersmith and managed by the 
Xaverian Brothers, fourteen of whom were attached 
to the school. At the time of his visit Father 
Haskins found seventy young men students at this 
school, for whose training and education the govern- 
ment allowed $200 each annually, so that the 
institution was then in receipt of government aid to 
the amount of $14,000 each year. If we are going 
to institute closer relations between England and this 
country, the United States ought to imitate the 
justice of the English Government in granting finan- 
cial assistance to religious establishments which 
render the state signal services or relieve it of 
responsibilities in the matter of education. He also 
visited St. Nicholas' Industrial School, in which, at 
the time of his call, there were two hundred and 



I06 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

sixty-four boys, under the general management of 
a worthy priest, Mgr. Searle. The allopathic treat- 
ment to which the inmates of this school, when sick, 
were subjected, appears to have amused the American 
clergyman not a little, for he says in his account of 
his visit to the institution: ''The reverend chaplain 
informed us, with great satisfaction, that the doctor 
had just ordered the purchase of twenty-six pounds 
of Epsom salts, to be dissolved in water and given in 
that form to the boys as their spring medicine. What 
the lads got for summer, fall and winter medicine, I 
did not learn." Among the other English institu- 
tions which Father Haskins visited were St. Edward's 
Reformatory, near Ilford, which occupied buildings 
that once formed the residence of Anne Boleyn; 
St. Mary's Orphanage, at North Hyde, managed by 
the Brothers of Mercy ; and the Creche, of which 
the good Sisters of Charity had charge; with all of 
which establishments he was favorably impressed. 
The next objective was Brussels, the Belgian 
capital, to which he went by boat from Dover to 
Ostend, then by rail through Bruges and Ghent. 
Of Brussels he writes that the place is a fine city. 
"The stores are elegant and substantial. The 
churches are large and richly ornamented. The 
people are all orderly, respectable and thrifty. 
Better than all else, they are a truly religious people, 
who love to visit the churches and assist at the 
offices on all religious festivals and solemnities." In 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 10/ 

going to Belgium Father Haskins had as his chief 
object to secure, if possible, some Brothers of Chari- 
ty for the House of the Angel Guardian. The fame of 
these Brothers was well known to him and he was 
convinced that if he could only procure some of 
them for his cherished Roxbury institution, all would 
be well in future with that establishment. It was with 
high hopes, therefore, that he proceeded to Malines, 
but we will let him tell the disappointing results of 
his visit himself "On May 12," writes he, "we 
went to Malines and called upon Very Rev. Canon 
Schepper, Superior of the Brothers of Charity, in 
the fervent hope that, fortified as we were with 
letters to him, we could, through his influence, ob- 
tain a community of Brothers for the Diocese of 
Boston; but we were doomed to disappointment. In 
the first place, the Canon had been very ill, and al- 
though he was happily convalescent, he was as yet 
unable to receive visitors. When we sent him word 
of the reason and nature of our visit, he expressed his 
deep regrets that he could not meet our wishes, inas- 
much as he had no Brothers whom he could spare." 
Father Haskins was shown through the Brothers* 
College, in which he found about three hundred 
students, each of whom paid an annual sum, about 
$80, for board and tuition. The Brothers them- 
selves numbered forty, novices included ; and the 
splendid management of the establishment, its clean- 
liness, perfect equipment, regularity, and in fact 



I08 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

everything about it elicited from him and his party 
the warmest praise. But his disappointment at not 
securing the Brothers whom he had hoped to get 
robbed his visit to Malines of much of the enjoy- 
ment he would otherwise have derived from it. Before 
quitting the place, he visited the college, taught by 
the Jesuits, where Bishop Fitzpatrick, on a previous 
visit, was detained for quite a lengthy period by ill- 
ness ; and also the parish church, in which he said 
Mass on the Sunday which he spent at Malines. 
Then he went to Ghent, to visit another School under 
the management of the Brothers of Charity ; and he 
also inspected the deaf and dumb schools founded 
by Mgr. Haerne, who was then a member of the 
Belgian Legislative Assembly. He enlisted the ser- 
vices of that distinguished divine and also those of 
Father Deynoodt, the procurator of the Jesuit College 
at Malines in behalf of the House of the Angel 
Guardian and the getting of a colony of Brothers 
for it ; but although Belgian ecclesiastics seconded 
v^armly and earnestly the appeals which were ad- 
dressed to the Brothers' estabHshment at Cologne, 
Boisleduc, Bruges, Maastricht and other places, and 
notwithstanding that Father Haskins went in person 
to two or more of the establishments, his and their 
efforts proved fruitless. There were no Brothers to 
spare in any of the houses. All were needed where 
they were, and their numbers were all too small for 
home work, so that it was out of the question for the 
time being at least to send any to America. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FATHER HASKINS' PREPARES TO RETURN TO BOSTON THE 

FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR PREVENTS HIM FROM VISITING 

PARIS BACK IN IRELAND AGAIN HE SPENDS A FEW DAYS- 

IN ULSTER HIS HURRY TO GET BACK TO HIS BELOVED- 

INSTITUTION HIS LAST ANNUAL REPORT TO THE TRUS- 
TEES OF THE HOUSE OF THE ANGEL GUARDIAN. 

WHEN he was disappointed in the chief purpose 
which had induced him to cross the ocean, 
that of securing a colony of Brothers to take charge 
and assume management of his cherished institution, 
there was no attraction sufficiently strong to detain 
Father Haskins in Europe. He longed to get back 
again to Boston, in order that he might give the 
House of the Angel Guardian that loving care and 
attention which he had always bestowed upon it since it 
firstcame into existence under his inspiration and labor. 
He accordingly turned his face westward again, when 
he had learned in Belgium that there was no present 
possibility of securing Brothers. It is worthy, per- 
haps, of remark here that his Belgian trip was not 
altogether barren of results for the House of the 
Angel Guardian. What he learned and saw there of 
the Brothers of Charity made so lasting and favorable 
impression upon his mind that he ever afterwards. 



I 10 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

when he had occasion to mention the subject, spoke 
in the highest terms of the spirit and capabilities 
of these religious and expressed the earnest wish 
that Divine Providence would yet enable him to 
secure some of them for his beloved boys. Though 
he did not live to see his wishes, nay, his prayers, 
in this matter, granted, it can, we think, be safely 
said that his commendations of the Brothers of 
Charity, his praises of their methods, and his often- 
repeated eulogies of their work as he had seen that 
in Belgium, proved no small deterniining influences 
in bringing those religious to the House of the Angel 
•Guardian after his death. 

By May 20th, a little nrore than a month from 
the day he left Sandy Hook, Father Haskins was 
back again in London on his homeward voyage. 
From Brussels he came south through France, to 
Calais. He was tempted to go to Paris, and see if 
he could do anything there for his institution, in the 
way of getting Brothers. But as the Franco-Prus- 
sian War was then going on, a moment's reflection 
told him that it would be only wasting time and 
courting a new disappointment to go to the French 
Capital. Therefore he proceeded to Calais without 
delay. There he took a steamer to Ireland, went 
to Dublin, and as he had, on his arrival in Ireland 
the previous month, visited the southern sections of 
the Green Isle, he turned his steps now to the north, 
and proceeded by rail to Londonderry. There he 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. Ill 

was the guest of an excellent Catholic woman, Mrs. 
MulhoUand, to whom he had letters of introduction 
from friends in Boston, and that good soul did all 
in her power to make the stay in Derry, of the 
American priest, a pleasure to him. He visited all 
the places of interest about Londonderry, Portrush, 
Malin Head and the famous Giant's Causeway. 
That wonderful basaltic formation greatly impressed 
Father Haskins, who saw in it one of the marvellous 
works of Divine Omnipotence. He saw, but did 
not attempt the passage of the flying bridge of Car- 
rick-a-Rede ; and his heart was sorrowed by the 
thought that the Orange feuds which at times dis- 
turb the peace of this whole portion of Ireland, but 
of which he saw no evidences during his stay in the 
neighborhood of Derry, are sometimes carried 
across the ocean, to work mischief in lands which 
should never have known them. 

But Father Haskins was eager to be back again in 
Boston all the while that he was enjoying the 
hospitality of generous friends in the north of Ire- 
land. So, bidding them an affectionate adieu — he 
was never again to see them — he hastened south to 
Queenstown and took the steamer for New York, 
his trip abroad lasting about two months altogether. 
What thoughts of Ireland he brought back with him 
may be judged from their brief extracts from the 
little work which he published soon after his return 
to Boston. "If I could have had the time," says he 



112 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

in one passage of that work, "I would indeed have 
measured out and surveyed every portion of that 
honored land ; I would again have visited Killarney 
and its beautiful lakes, and grottoes and cascades, and 
its remarkable echoes and venerable ruins. I would 
have visited Limerick, on the lovely banks of the 
broad Shannon, the famous city of the Violated 
Treaty, and the tomb of so many valiant Irish heroes. 
I would have tarried in good old Gal way, the city of 
the Tribes, so long a port of trade for many nations ; 
and I would have lingered, too, in the counties of 
Longford and Fermanagh, endeared as they are to 
thousands among and around us here in Boston^ 
Belfast, with its vast population, its thriving in- 
dustries, where are manufactured the finest and the 
best linens in the world, would have attracted and 
detained me ; and so, too, would Donegal, with its 
majestic wild glens and its frowning, but beautiful 
mountains ; but my tour was one of business, not 
pleasure, and my time was limited." And again he 
tells us that "As regards Ireland and the Irish 
people, there is one thing which I fondly and 
ardently wish to see 'before I die, and that is a 
United Ireland ; an Ireland united in religion^ 
united in politics, united in love. No contest, no 
jealousies between this country and that, nothing 
dividing Ulster from Munster, or Leinster from Con- 
naught ; but all united in good works, united at home 
and united abroad. Then will Ireland be again the 




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LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. II3 

Ireland of old, the admiration of all the nations and 
the glory of the earth." 

In the last annual report which he made to the 
trustees of the House of the Angel Guardian, that 
of 187 1, the year before his death, we find the 
following short reference to Father Haskins' last 
European trip : "During two months of last spring 
I was absent. I crossed the ocean and visited many 
institutions for boys in Ireland, England and Belgium. 
The main object of my tour was to seek for Brothers 
of some established order to undertake the man- 
agement of this institution ; but to our great 
disappointment, we were informed on every side that 
the orders to which we applied had no subjects 
whom they could spare ; had not even enough for 
their own immediate wants. Still my tour was far 
from being unprofitable, even in regard to the inter- 
ests of our institution. I have learned many things 
which I hope to be able to turn to profit. Not one, 
however, of those foreign institutions abated a jot of 
my pride in the House of the Angel Guardian. Not 
one of them equalled it in good order, discipline, 
cleanliness and architectural arrangements." These 
were natural sentiments for the zealous founder to 
entertain in regard to his own beloved establish- 
ment, and all that he said of the House of the Angel 
Guardian was measurably true. For under his wise 
direction and unflagging supervision the Roxbury 
institution had unquestionably attained a very high 



114 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

rank because of its undoubted merits and the wise 
methods whereby it was managed and governed under 
Father Haskins' direction. Still his natural and great 
pride in his establishment did not prevent its good 
founder from recognizing that for the House of the 
Angel Guardian to reach the full measure of its use- 
fulness, it was very necessary that its management 
should be vested in a religious community whose 
members make the care of such boys as the home 
aimed at befriending, a labor of love and their life 
work. 

In this last annual report which he rendered to the 
trustees of the House of the Angel Guardian, Father 
Haskins dwelt at some length upon certain methods 
and features of charitable and benevolent institutions, 
and expressed very clear views on a variety of sub- 
jects. This was not the first time for him to do 
that, however. In some of his earlier reports we 
may find the same subjects treated, and in the en- 
tertaining books he published descriptive of his 
visits to Europe in 1854 and in 1871, we frequently 
find similar opinions expressed as he embodied in 
his last annual report. One of the subjects upon 
which the good founder had very pronounced ideag 
was corporal punishment. Personally, he had, from 
the days of his own boyhood, the greatest aversion 
to that manner of correction. He had seen many 
instances of brutal punishment by schoolmasters, and 
his sensitive soul revolted at corporal punishment 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. I I 5 

which he was wont to characterize as "a relic of 
barbarism, degrading alike to the child and the 
teacher." And yet, not because it was his wish, but 
for the reason that some of the teachers whom he 
had employed in the earlier years of his institution 
believed in the wisdom of Solomon's proverb, the 
rod was at times brought into requisition there. 
"But forsome years past," said Father Haskins, in his 
last yearly report, "it has been almost entirely discon- 
tinued by the teachers themselves, simply because 
they knew that such was the wish of the trustees. 
Yet no law of prohibition of any kind has ever been 
made. Our teachers discovered that there were 
other means of governing refractory boys than by 
punishing them with rods of rattan and birch, and 
they never had better order or progress in their 
schools than at the present time." 

Another subject to which P^ather Haskins gave 
much thought, and on which he found it advisable, 
nay, necessary, to express clear opinions, was the 
misconception which prevailed in certain circles 
that the House of the Angel Guardian was an 
institution which expected nothing in the line of 
payment from parents capable of contributing to the 
support of their oftsprings who were sheltered and 
trained in it. As has been stated in a previous 
chapter, this was a matter which compelled Father 
Haskins to consider it away back in the days when 
the House of the Angel Guardian was located at 



Il6 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

the North End. Then he found that if he made his 
institution a free one, he would not be able to re- 
ceive half the boys who would be brought to him, 
and he learned, furthermore, that by making his 
home a free establishment, the very lads whom he 
wanted to reach and save would be crowded out by 
another class whose parents were abundantly able 
to pay for their support. From the very outset, 
therefore, a stated sum — and it was small enough, 
heaven knows — was asked from parents able to pay 
it who brought boys to the House of the Angel 
Guardian ; and that character, that feature of the 
institution has never been altered since. The rule 
is the same to-day as it^was in Father Haskins' time. 
The House of the Angel Guardian is itself the same 
to-day as it was when he was living; and what its 
character then was may be judged from the follow- 
ing description of classes of boys whom Father 
Haskins, in his 1871 report, said the institution 
received. * 'First, orphans, who, if destitute, are usu- 
ally supported in part by charitable societies of the 
parish whence they come. Secondly, homeless 
children and waifs, who are, ofcourse, adopted by the 
trustees. Thirdly, boys who have good homes and 
parents, but who are beyond parental control. The 
parents of these lads cheerfully pay the small sum 
demanded, in order to save their wayward boys from 
a state reformatory during their minority. Fourthly, 
we visit the Probate, Municipal and Superior courts 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 11/ 

and save many youths from the shame of a sentence 
and the state from the cost of their maintenance. 
Fifthly, poverty sends us many. These boys, of 
course, pay nothing, for they have nothing wherewith 
to pay. We adopt such and procure good homes for 
them. Sixthly, there are parents not rich, and who 
cannot, consequently, afford to send their sons to 
college. Such parents often seek some other school 
where the expense of their boys' education will be 
within their means. Many lads of this class come 
to our institution, and thus augment our means of 
support. The amount we received during the past 
years for the board of boys was $13,259.53." And 
as has already been remarked, the character of the 
House of the Angel Guardian to-day is, as far 
as this matter is concerned, unchanged from what 
it was in Father Haskins' time. It receives the same 
classes of boys as he welcomed within its sheltering 
walls ; and it may be added here that were it not for 
the money which it receives from parents capable 
of contributing towards the expenses of their sons' 
maintenance and tuition — very modest and small 
though its charges are — the House of the Angel 
Guardian would never have attained its present use- 
fulness, nor could it carry on for any length of time 
the great good work which it is now accomplishing. 
Another subject upon which Father Haskins en- 
tertained very decided and, at the same time, very 
well-founded and correct views, was upon the wisdom 



Il8 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

which the state exhibits which grants financial assist- 
ance to institutions which, hke the House of the 
Angel Guardian, relieve it of the care and cost of 
maintaining boys and other persons whose training 
and support would otherwise devolve upon the state 
itself. We have already, in a preceding chapter, 
cited some observations which he made upon this 
subject when visiting certain European institutions 
which received aid from the government of the coun- 
tries in which they were located. In the report 
which he made to the trustees of the House of the 
Angel Guardian in the year of his return from his 
last trans-Atlantic trip, the far-seeing founder spoke 
as follows on this same topic, to wit, the wise policy 
of giving legal encouragement by state aid to such 
institutions : "It is the wisest policy because, after 
all, it is a great saving for the state. The more 
such institutions multiply, the less the cost to the 
state for the support of the children and for the 
erection of the necessary buildings in which to house 
and care for them. Were it not for the Home for 
Destitute Children, the House of the Angel Guardian, 
and the Home for Little Wanderers, our state and 
municipal authorities would have been forced by sheer 
necessity to erect additional buildings or else to es- 
tablish other juvenile asylums„ Therefore is it that, 
with the independence which I think becomes a true 
American, I plead for denominational asylums. Let 
persons of any denomination of religious belief pur- 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. II9 

chase, buildings and land, and establish an asylum 
for the orphans, for the homeless, and the wayward, 
to be managed by persons of their own faith, and 
then let the state come forward with its *God speed 
you ! We will aid you I' This, surely, would be the 
wisest policy to pursue for any state which attaches 
importance to the inculcation of religion and morals." 
The question could hardly be better stated than 
Father Haskins has put it in his few foregoing sen- 
tences. Yet, it is sad to be obliged to chronicle the 
fact, that the wise state policy which he sets forth 
above has as yet failed to win general acceptance in 
this enlightened country, and from so intelligent a 
people as Americans admittedly are. Probably the 
reason thereof is to be found in the fact that there is 
always to be found here a certain class, all too numer- 
ous, who are all too easily swayed when their religious 
prejudices are appealed to artfully. Let a denomi- 
national institution, particularly if it beunder Catholic 
management, be proposed as one deserving recog- 
nition by the city or state, and forthwith there are 
always sure to come to the front persons who raise 
the cry of no union between Church and State, no 
grants for sectarian purposes, no voting of public 
money to religious or private institutions ! These 
professional agitators carefully conceal from the 
public the fact that the worthy institutions which 
they decry are doing work which, if they did not 
do it, the state would have to perform. They sed- 



120 LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 

ulously forget to mention the circumstance that the 
state receives full value — and much more than full 
valke — for every dollar that it gives to such institu- 
tions. And they are always dishonest enough to 
keep hidden from the public the truth that these in- 
stitutions are doing not only a v^ork which the state, 
in their absence, w^ould have to perform, but are, 
furthermore, doing that in a far better and far cheaper 
manner than the state could ever hope to accom- 
plish it. None of our state asylums, reformatories, 
or other correctional institutions have ever achieved 
any marked success in the line of bettering the moral 
condition of their inmates. In most cases, the boy 
who is sent to a state reformatory leaves it, when his 
term has expired, more disposed to evil ways than 
when he entered it. His associations during the 
time of his detention in the state institution have not 
been of the most elevating sort. Little or no attempt 
has been made to reach the spiritual side of his 
nature. Non-sectarian religious instruction — and that 
is the only sort which is permitted in such institu- 
tions — is not capable of bettering the moral condition 
of those who are treated to it. Father Haskins 
believed that any form of Christianity is better 
than none. He considered it better to hold to some 
Divine Truths than to upset all. But he also 
believed that the only safe and certain way to implant 
religious seed in youthful minds, especially when 
those minds were wayward ones, and to expect fruits 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 121 

from them, was to have asylums, homes, reformatories, 
etc., wherein the inmates should be governed and 
instructed by persons of their own religious faith ; 
and his belief in that matter was as correct as his 
tenets generally were. May the day soon dawn when 
the sound principles upon which this belief of his 
rested shall be generally recognized and acted upon 
in every community I 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CLOSING YEARS OF FATHER HASKINS' LIFE — HIS MANI- 
FOLD OCCUPATIONS HIS FONDNESS OF STUDY AND HIS 

LITERARY ABILITIES HIS DEATH HIS OBSEQUIES AND 

THE TRIBUTES TO HIS WORTH AND WORK. 

A MAN who had so much work to attend to as 
did Father Haskins, could hardly be expected 
to devote much time to other occupations than the 
ones which were the chief concerns of his life. He 
was charged with several responsibilities any one of 
which, it may almost be said, would have been suffi- 
cient to monopolize an ordinary mortal's time and 
attention. His parish at the North End, especially 
in the latter years of his life, was recognized as one 
of the largest, most important and most laborious 
ones in Boston. Yet he was the pastor of that, in 
addition to all his other occupations, and the old 
North Enders talk to this day of the zeal which 
Father Haskins showed for their spiritual and tem- 
poral welfare, of the scrupulousness with which he 
acquitted himself of all, even the least, of his pastoral 
duties, and of his deep interest in and sympathy 
with all that concerned St. Stephen's Church. Then 
he was the head of the House of the Angel Guardian,, 
and as such had to exercise a continual vigilance- 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. I 23 

over the affairs of that institution. How multitu- 
dinous were the cares which this responsibiHty placed 
upon him does not need to be detailed here. If the 
House of the Angel Guardian in his day was not the 
completely organized and far-reaching establishment 
it has since been made by the Brothers of Charity, 
it was nevertheless a great care to the one man 
whom all regarded as its director, and whom all that 
had any business with the institution consulted. It 
^ is true that Father Haskins had his assistants ; but 
the whole responsibility of the house rested upon his 
shoulders, nevertheless. He could, of course, and 
did consult, when needs arose, with the Bishop, who 
always took a truly paternal interest in the institu- 
tion ; and he had sage counsellors, too, in the 
venerable priests who constituted the Board of 
Trustees. But neither the Bishop, nor the Trustees 
could always be consulted in the hundred and one 
difficulties and emergencies that always present 
themselves in the management of an institution like 
the House of the Angel Guardian; and in all such 
cases Father Haskins had to decide matters himself 
and act upon his own responsibility. 

Yet this priest, burdened with so many and 
weighty cares, found leisure — strange as it may 
seem — to engage in other occupations. He had 
always been a student, was particularly fond o 
books, and nothing gave him more pleasure than to 
drop into some of the public schools, in his capac- 



124 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

ty as committee man, and renew his acquaintance 
with the studies that he had himself followed in 
these schools in his youth. The old Latin School, 
in Bedford Street, was a favorite calling place of his. 
He seemed to take a special delight in listening 
again to the reading of Virgil and Cicero^ of 
Xenophon and Homer. He had a keen eye and a 
quick ear ; and the few Catholic boys who, in his 
day, were to be found in the Latin School, were al- 
ways lads in whom he took a great interest. In his 
day as committeeman, the present Bishop of Provi- 
dence was a Latin School boy, one who was a great 
favorite with his masters because of his exceptional 
abilities and remarkable application ; and with his 
fellow-pupils by reason of his genial ways and noble 
character. There were others, too, in whom Father 
Haskins evinced great interest; and many were the 
encouraging words and the sage counsels which, 
when occasion was given, he addressed to such. 

Had his other cares permitted him to give more 
care and time to it. Father Haskins might easily 
have made a name for himself in the literary world. 
He wrote readily, and except when he was hurried, 
gracefully and well. He possessed so thorough a 
knowledge of Protestant Episcopalianism, that, after 
he became a Catholic, he was exceptionally well 
qualified to deal with theological points in which 
that phase of Protestantism figured. And he had 
a liking, too, for such work. Even before his own 



LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. 125 

conversion to Catholicism, he indulged in this 
species of polemical writing, if it may be called such ; 
and he contributed to the Boston Pilot a series of 
papers, over the signature of Verhicm Sa^ienti^ 
which attracted wide attention for the clear insight 
which their author had into the weak points 
of Episcopalian Theology. These papers were 
addressed to Protestants, and it is running no risk at 
all to assert that they were the means of bringing 
into the Catholic Fold some souls who might other- 
wise have never experienced the consolations and 
peace of the True Faith. It may be mentioned here 
that Father Haskins was one of the first Bostonians 
of his faith to join, and thus to assist the general 
Theological Library, on whose roster also appears the 
honored name of Archbishop Williams. On his return 
from his first trip to Europe, in 1854, Father Haskins 
wrote and published in book form a very interest- 
ing account of his travels. This work, which was 
very well written, was a great favorite in its day, 
with Catholic readers hereabouts, and it is to be re- 
gretted that copies of it are now so rare and so difficult 
to get. The smaller volume. Six Weeks Abroad^ 
which the venerable founder published in 1872, 
dedicating it to the Rev. James A. Healy, then pastor 
of St. James' Church, Boston, was simply a hasty tran- 
script of notes jotted down by Father Haskins during 
his last flying trip to Europe ; and in the preface we 
are told that "These few pages make no pretension to 



126 LIFE OF FATHER IIASKINS. 

learning or research. They are not pubHshed as a 
Book of Travels. They are simply the substance ol 
a few lectures delivered by request, at different times 
and places, after my return from a short visit to the 
Old World in 1871." We are tempted, however, to 
take from the pages of this little volume the follow- 
ing extract which deals with a question that is one 
of the most prominent religious issues in England 
to-day. Writing of Ritualism, Father Haskins said 
in the early seventies: "A marvellous change in 
the feelings of the English people appears to be 
rapidly taking place, which it is devoutly hoped 
will result in the conversion of England. The prayers 
initiated by Father Ignatius, the Passionist, have not 
been lost ; they are bringing forth their fruit ; it is 
even now ripening ; the fields await the reapers. 
The Ritualistic or High Church movement is sig- 
nificant. It is a big wave of the reflux of the 
Reformation ; it is more universal and more powerful 
than is generally thought ; it penetrates all classes, 
and is found in almost every family. 

''Legislative toleration has been secured for doc- 
trines and practices which, a few years ago, would 
have been thought to threaten the existence of the 
Established Church. 'They assert dogmas,' says 
the Dean of Chichester, one of the ablest of An- 
glican writers, *which can scarcely be distinguished 
from the errors of the Church of Rome.' Practices 
are now tolerated which were formerly regarded 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 12/ 

with horror and alarm. It is a significant fact that 
all these innovations in Protestantism are, by the 
Ritualists, or High Church party, called 'restorations.' 
Ritualism affects the English Church to the lowest 
depths of Evangelicism and Methodism. Disorgan- 
izers now disorganize ; even Dissenters talk of 
obedience and spiritual subjection. Chasubles, and 
candles, and colors, and mystic rites, are eagerly run 
after by the people who but yesterday despised them ; 
and they who gaze from mere curiosity are soon 
converted through admiration and instinctive love of 
beauty and order. 

"Ritualism has affected the nobles, the bishops, 
the clergy, the rich squire and the poor peasant; 
and the most rigid Puritans and enemies of it stand 
confused and aghast at the onslaught it is making. 

"The defenders of Ritualism hold a great vantage 
ground. They are brave, and they neither shrink 
nor yield. They are in earnest. The earth may 
explode, but they mean to stand. Such men ought 
to be Catholics, and, I believe, will be; they cannot 
long be content with imitation. They will seek the 
reality." 

This gives the reader a fair idea of Father Haskins' 
pithy and admirable style of writing. It affords 
him, too, an insight into the thoroughness of views 
which the venerated founder entertained on the sub- 
ject he discusses in the foregoing paragraphs. 
Were he alive to-dav, and were he to undertake to 



128 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

give his views on the crisis which at the present 
time confronts the Anglican Church, he might re- 
write the above words, and they would give all who 
read them a very fair understanding of the Anglican 
situation. 

Father Haskins was fond of literary work, and 
had he not been the exceedingly busy man he was 
during his life, he would doubtless have added not 
a little to our all too-scanty store of good Catholic 
literature. His Travels give details about the Eu- 
ropean lands which he visited on his first trip abroad 
that it is not easy to find in any other English work ; 
and for that reason the present rareness of that book 
is all the more to be regretted. We have given 
above a specimen of his more serious writing. He 
did not indulge in fictional writing, as far as we know, 
to any great extent. He did, however, write one 
short story — those who wish to read it in its entirety 
can find it in the four first issues of The OrpharCs 
Friend — which proves that, had he followed that 
line of literature, his success therein might not 
have been small. Let us quote the opening para- 
graphs here : 

''There was an old-fashioned, low-roofed house in 

Street, at the North End, which, during the 

war of 1776, had been the residence of a rich and 
aristocratic family. At the close of the war the 
proprietor sold the property, and left the country. 
Since that time the house had changed hands some 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. I 29 

fifty times, but these changes had added neither to 
its comforts nor its appearance. The shingles on 
the roof were few now, and they were black and 
warped ; and little more can be said of the clap- 
boards on its sides. The rooms in this old building 
were now rented out to the poorest families, mostly 
newly-arrived emigrants, who were to be found 
huddled together, men, women and children, pro- 
miscuously, without bedsteads and almost without 
beds. In almost every room there were persons ill 
of typhus-fever, w'hich dread disease might be stud- 
ied there in all its stages and degrees. 

"In the attic were two chambers, one occupied by 
a laboring man and his family, and this was the only 
room in which there was no fever. The other was 
occupied by a man, at least he was such in appear- 
ance, and his son, a lad of thirteen years of age. It 
is into this attic-room that we wish to introduce the 
reader, on a cheerless afternoon in the month of 
February. It was very scantily furnished. On a 
table, in one corner, stood a few tea-cups and dishes, 
all of them scrupulously clean. On a bed, in 
another corner, lay an old man, sick with the fever, 
and covered with a few tattered blankets. A picture 
of our Lord's Crucifixion hung over his head, and a 
rosary, with its rude crucifix of wood, was in his 
hands. The boy sat on a stool near the fire, if a few 
smoking chips in the hearth could be called a fire. 
He was a fine, intelligent-looking lad, though pale 
9 



I30 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

and thin. His skin was transparently clear and 
clean, and his locks, albeit long, were carefully 
combed. He held in his hand a book, though he 
was not reading it, for his eyes were intently fixed 
upon his father. The latter was very restless, and, 
as the night closed in, his restlessness increased. 
At times he wondered, and his prayers and his 
dreams and imaginations would be mingled together." 
That will serve as a sample of Father Haskins' de- 
scriptive style, and those who would learn more of the 
story whose opening paragraph we have quoted, 
would do well to hunt it up and read it in its entirety. 
It is not a long story, and it will deeply interest the 
ones who read it. 

When Father Haskins came back from Europe in 
the fall of 1 87 1, he doubtless anticipated and hoped 
that he would live some years yet to watch over his 
beloved institution. It was the dearest wish of his 
heart that he might be left with the House of the 
Angel Guardian until such time as he should see it 
placed in the hands of a religious organization,, 
whose members might develop it and give it the 
management which he knew it needed, and which he 
ardently desired to secure for it. But this was not 
to be his good fortune ; or rather it was from heaven 
that he was to have the pleasure of seeing his be- 
loved institution placed in the control of the Brothers 
of Charity, whom he tried so hard to secure for it on 
his two trips across the ocean, and again, in the visit 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 131 

which he made to Montreal. In his sixty-sixth year 
— he was born, it will be remembered, April 4, 1806 
— Father Haskins experienced very severe attacks 
from two ailments from which he had suffered much 
during his life. As soon as he recognized that 
these attacks might prove fatal to him, he went to 
his beloved retreat, the House of the Angel Guar- 
dian, and put his temporal affairs in order. That 
done, he devoted the rest of his days to spiritual 
matters. His recovery was made the object of fer- 
vent prayers, day and night, by the boys whom he 
had sheltered and befriended, and petitions in his 
behalf went up to heaven from many other hearts 
and lips. But they were not to be answered in the 
way it was hoped they would be. Father Haskins 
life-work was nearing its end. God had decided to 
call him from labor to rest, from toil to reward. On 
October 5, 1872, the good founder of the House of 
the Angel Guardian passed from time to eternity. 
As soon as the news of his death was heard at St. 
Stephen's, the bell of that church tolled out the 
sorrow and regret that weighed upon every heart, 
old and young, in the parish. During the whole of 
Saturday night, the day of his death, and all day 
Sunday the measured strokes of St. Stephen's bell 
told the North End and the city that Father Has- 
kins was no more. Up at the House of the Angel 
Guardian grief reigned everywhere. The boys went 
about with silent steps, dim eyes and heavy hearts. 



t32 LIFE OF FATHER IIASKINS. 

They gathered in the chapel to pray for their bene- 
factor's soul; and to listen to the requiem that was 
■sung for his repose. From all parts of the city, and 
from places far removed from the town, an incessant 
throng of people came to the institution to ask that 
they be allowed to look once more upon the features 
>of the good priest whose name had become — and 
:still remains — a household word in the Boston arch- 
diocese and New England. After the Mass in the 
institution's chapel, the body of the lamented priest 
was taken to St. Stephen's. The streets about the 
House of the Angel Guardian were thronged with 
mourners, and when the sad procession started on its 
way to the North End, it was pitiful to see the grief 
shown at the House of the Angel Guardian, whose 
inmates realized that never again would Father 
Haskins' cheery face be • seen or his kindly voice be 
heard within the walls of the establishment which he 
.erected. When St. Stephen's was reached, the 
coffin containing the honored dead was borne into 
the sacred edifice and placed before the high altar, 
whereupon Father Haskins had so often stood to 
celebrate the Divine Mysteries or to announce the 
Word of God to his people. During the remainder 
of Sunday a ceaseless procession of the parish- 
ioners, heavy-hearted and with eyes dimmed with 
tears, passed around the coffin, looked for the last 
time upon their. dead pastor's face, knelt awhile to 
.pray for his eternal repose,, and then slowly went 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKIXS. I 33 

their several ways honie. On Monday Requiem 
Masses were offered up in St. Stephen's for the dead 
priest ; and the church was thronged all day with 
mourners. It was estimated that not less than ten 
thousand people entered the sacred edifice during 
the time that Father Haskins lay in state, dead and 
cold, before the high altar. 

Tuesday was the d'c\y of the funeral. By order 
of the school committee, all the public schools in the 
parish were closed, so that the children might attend 
the Mass which was said, in their name, for the dead 
clergyman at 8 o'clock. At ten o'clock occurred 
the Solemn High Mass of Requiem, at which Bishop 
Williams was present, sitting in the sanctuary. The 
celebrant of the Mass was the Very Rev. P. F. Lyn- 
don, vicar-general of the diocese and rector of the 
cathedral. The deacon and sub-deacon were 
respectively, the Revs. D. J. O'Farrell and J. VV. 
McMahon, D. D., senior and junior assistant pastors 
of St. Stephen's. The sanctuary was filled with 
priests from all parts of New England, those present, 
according to the daily papers of the time, being the 
Revs. William Byrne, Cathedral ; William A. Blenk- 
insop. South Boston; Robert Fulton, S. J., Boston 
College ; William Brady, S. J., St. Mary's, Endicott 
Street; James Fitton, East Boston; P. Strain. Lynn ; 
M. P. Doherty (one of the trustees of the House of the 
Angel Guardian), Cambridge; T. A. Field, O. S. A. 
and J. J Bowles, O. S. A., Lawrence; J. H. Cassin,. 



134 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

East Boston; Thomas Norris, Stoughton ; J. Mc- 
Shane, Lawrence; M. O'Brien, Lowell; William D. 
Kelly, Taunton ; J. Delehanty, Marlboro ; Nicholas 
O'Brien, House of the Angel Guardian ; Stanislaus 
Buteux, Carney Hospital ; James Griffin, St. Francis 
de Sales ; Father Callan, Salem ; M. Lane, South 
Boston; Vincent Borgialli, South Boston; M. J. 
Supple, Charlestown ; W. J. J. Denvir, Cathedral; 
James McGrath, O. M. L, Lowell; John W. Dona- 
hue, East Cambridge; E. Sheridan, Taunton; 
Emiliano Gerbi, South Boston ; Father Duncan. S. J., 
Endicott Street : Michael Moran, Abington ; Thomas 
H. Shahan (another trustee), Beverly; Mathew 
Harkins, Salem; D. O'Callaghan, South Boston; 
John Flatley, Canton; M. J. Flatley, St. James', 
Boston; Richard Donnelly, St. Patrick's, Boston ; M. 
Clark, East Boston; W. O'Connor, C. SS. R., 
Roxbury; L. P. McCarthy, East Boston; L. J. 
Morris,Waltham ;P. Menietti,Hopkinton ; A, J.Rossi, 
Saxonville : Thomas Magennis, Jamaica Plain : R.J. 
Ouinlan, Wolliston ; L. S. McMahon, New Bedford ; 
T. R. McNulty, Milton; J. C. Murphy, Abington; 
Hugh Smyth and Peter Leddy, Weymouth ; T. 
Brosnahan, Maynard ; F. Baratta, Ayer; J. S. 
Cullen, Hopkinton; James E. O'Brien, St. James', 
Boston; H. L. Robinson, Uxbride ; J. Qualey, 
Woburn ; Fr. Tehan, S. J., Boston ; J. McGlew, 
Chelsea; William Shinnick, East Cambridge; Fran- 
cis Friguglietti, Quincy. The body of the church 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 135 

Avas tilled in every available space with members of 
the laity, and representatives of the city government, 
the school committee, and the various Catholic 
societies were to be seen in the multitude of mourn- 
ers. The Bishop gave the last absolution, and Father 
Healy, now the Bishop of Portland, announced that 
in deference to the express wish of Father Haskins, 
no panegyric would be pronounced, adding that 
none was needed, since the work which he left be- 
hind him was the dead priest's best monument and 
eulogy. A long cortege followed the coffin to the 
graveyard, where the last rites were solemnly per- 
formed. 

At the lirst meeting of the school committee held 
after his death Dr. Shurtleff spoke in warm praise of 
Father Haskins and his work on the Board ; and the 
following resolutions were unanimously adopted : 

"•Whereas it has pleased Divine Providence to re- 
move by death one who has for a long series of 
years very faithfully served the city on this Board, it 
is hereby: 

"Resolved, that the Board of School Committee 
has heard with much regret and sorrow that the Rev. 
George Foxcroft Haskins has been taken from this 
life by death. 

"Resolved, that in all the relations which he had 
with the members of this Board his course had been 
strongly marked by his disinterested efforts for the 
good of the public schools, and for increasing their 



136 LIFE OF FATHER HASKIN5. . 

excellence and for promoting harmony among the 
Committee ; and that his memory will be cherished 
by his former associates with deep regard and 
sincere respect. 

It is now nearly twenty-seven full years since 
Father Haskins passed away from the scene of his 
earthly labors to the reward which we fondly believe 
him to be enjoying in heaven. Were all other 
testimonials to the nobility of his character, the 
sanctity of his life and the excellence of his priestly 
work wanting, a sufficient and eloquent tribute to all 
these things might be found in the fact that his 
memory is still green and his name yet a household 
word with the Catholic people of Boston and New 
England, and will long remain such. We know of 
no better way in which to close this volume, in which 
we have endeavored to portray his sacerdotal life 
and labors for the reader, than by devoting its final 
chapter to an account of what has been done at the 
House of the Angel Guardian since its honored 
founder's death. 



CHAPTER XL 

AFTER THE FOUNDER'S DEATH — THE COMING OF THE 

BROTHERS OF CHARITY BROTHER JUSTINIAN THE FIRST 

SUPERIOR BROTHERS WENCESLAUS, EUSEBIUS AND 

JOSEPH BROTHER JUDE, THE PRESENT HEAD OF THE 

HOME THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AND ITS LARGE SUCCESS. 

FATHER HASKINS was dead, but the institu- 
tion which he had founded had to conquer the 
grief which his loss entailed upon it, and go on with 
the work for the accomplishment of which it was 
erected. The need of a religious community to 
assume the directions of its affairs, recognized so often 
by the good founder during his life-time, made it- 
self felt more intensely when he was no longer at the 
head of the House of the Angel Guardian. Bishop 
Williams and the Board of Trustees, consequently, 
redoubled their efforts to secure such management 
for the institution. Knowing how greatly Father 
Haskins had desired to get the Brothers of Charity 
for directors of his beloved home, they applied anew 
to those religious to come to their assistance. Their 
applications were, naturally, directed to the Brothers, 
of Charity at Montreal, that city being the nearest 
place to Boston where the sons of Father Triest 
were to be found. But the Montreal Brothers had 



138 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

all they could do to attend to the work which de- 
volved upon them in that place. Hence they were 
unable to give a favorable response to the first ap- 
peals that were addressed to them from Boston. 
The bishop and the trustees persisted, though. 
They represented to the Brothers the urgent need in 
which the House of the Angel Guardian stood of 
their coming and direction ; and so eloquently did 
they plead in behalf of the Boston institution that 
the Montreal Brothers forwarded their petitions to 
the superior-general, with the recommendation that, 
if it were at all feasible, they should be granted. 
All this took time, of course. Father Haskins died 
in October, 1872 ; and it was not until January, 1874, 
that word reached the Montreal community author- 
izing them to send a colony of Brothers to the House 
of the Angel Guardian at Boston. 

A providential man was chosen to head the little 
band of Brothers who were to be the pioneers of 
their order in this city. Brother Justinian — how his 
noble figure looms up before us as we pen his name, 
and his genial, kindly face comes out of the shadows to 
smile in his own sweet fashion once again ! — was 
exceptionally well equipped for the difficult tasks that 
awaited him at the House of the Angel Guardian. 
Father Haskins had done wonders in his time at the 
institution ; but he left a great deal to be done by 
his successors, and he bequeathed to them — through 
no fault or neglect on his part, however — an indebt- 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 139 

edness which amounted to $40,000. To handle that 
debt successfully, and, at the same time, see that the 
institution went on its way and performed all that 
could be expected of it, required very skilful 
management and no small abilities on the part of 
the new superior. Brother Justinian soon showed 
himself the man of all men for the place, though. 
Faithful to punctiliousness in the observance of the 
rule of the Brotherhood— that rule, by the way, has 
just been approved by the Holy Father— he was an 
inspiration to the rest of the community, while by 
his gentle tact, winning ways and unflagging per- 
severance he won daily, it may be said, new friends 
for the House of the Angel Guardian, and rendered 
its old friends more zealous in its behalf. After a 
while, when he saw his way clear to the successful 
handling of the institution's debt — and the wise 
economy which marked his administration from the 
very start, materially hastened the coming of that 

day Brother Justinian felt justified in undertaking 

some much needed improvements and enlargements 
at the home. It was he who added to the establish- 
ment the wash-house and stable, the erection of 
which entailed no small expense. He had the entire 
interior of the main building repainted, and he 
caused the chapel to be frescoed and otherwise 
beautified. His work here was so markedly success- 
ful, and the executive abilities which he displayed 
were so noticeable, that the superior-general decided 



I40 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

that Brother Justinian was just the sort of an admin- 
istrator to be made provincial of the community on 
this side of the ocean. Consequently, in 1878, he 
was bidden to return to Montreal and assume the 
responsibilities of the head of the American province. 
He left things in good running order at the House of 
the Angel Guardian. He had effected a reduction, 
small, perhaps, but nevertheless quite tangible, in 
the indebtedness of the institution; and as has 
already been said, he added considerably to the 
establishment itself and thereby increased its useful- 
ness. During the rest of his life he always retained 
the warmest interest in the house, and whenever an 
opportunity presented itself to him of doing any- 
thing in its behalf, it was accepted with the most 
joyful eagerness. 

To Brother Justinian, as head of the House of the 
Angel Guardian, succeeded Brother Wenceslaus, 
whose administretion covered a period of three years 
— from 1878 to 1 88 1 — during which time the insti- 
tution went on prospering and increasing its salutary 
influence. The wise lines which Brother Justinian 
had laid down for the guidance of the Brothers were 
faithfully followed by Brother Wenceslaus, and when, 
in 1 88 1, the Superior-General assigned him to the 
superiorship of a new establishment which was that 
year opened at Waterford, Ireland, an asylum for 
the care of insane male patients, his removal from 
Boston was deeply regretted by all the friends of 



LIFE OF FATHER RASKINS. I41 

the institution, who, much as they rejoiced in the 
high honors that had so deservedly come to him, 
felt that his departure was a distinct loss to the 
House of the Angel Guardian, whose affairs he had 
so well administered. 

The third superior of the House of the Angel 
Guardian, after that came under the present manage- 
ment, was Brother Eusebius, who had formerly filled 
illoustriously the office of American provincial, and 
who was also the founder of the Congregation 
in America. This good Brother, who had known 
and shared the many trials and hardships which the 
Brothers of Charity encountered during their first 
years on this side of the ocean, was never known to 
murmur or complain at the lot which befell the com- 
munity, however trying that was. He had the virtue 
of patience in a remarkable degree, and he possessed 
an unwavering confidence that God, in His own 
good time, would enable the Brotherhood to sur- 
mount all ditliculties and accomplish the work which 
was so dear to the hearts of its members. During 
Brother Eusebius' provincialship occurred an incident 
at Montreal which, inasmuch as it served to illustrate 
what penury and privations the Brothers then knew, 
and also enables us to pay a deserving tribute to a 
worthy and most generous benefactor of the commu- 
nity, may well be told here. It happened that one 
day the Very Reverend Vicar-General of the Mon- 
treal diocese was at the Brother's house in Montreal 



142 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

— 1 

city, and his visit was made at such an hour that the 
Brothers, although they were painfully aware of the 
poverty of their larder, felt constrained to ask him to 
breakfast. The Vicar-General accepted the invita- 
tion, but when he had finished the meal — which he 
partook of with the Brothers at which the fare was 
dry bread, coffee innocent of the faintest acquaintance 
with milk, and for himself, a bit of cake so hard as 
almost to defy breaking — he upbraided the Brothers 
for not having made their wants known to the diocesan 
authorities. The memory of that breakfast so 
haunted the good Vicar-General that he lost no time 
in acquainting a wealthy friend of his, Monsieur Ber- 
thelet, with the pitiable condition of the Brothers. 
That gentleman, who had been instrumental in 
bringing the Brothers to Montreal — he went to Bel- 
gium first about i860 to secure a colony, but failed 
then, and he accompanied Mgr. Bourget when that 
prelate went again, to try and get the Brothers in 
1864, in which year, after having his request re- 
fused, for lack of Brothers to send to Canada, by 
Pere Gregoire, Mgr. Bourget secured them from 
the Bishop of Gand, who was the spiritual head of 
the Congregation — knew that the Montreal Brothers 
were poor ; but he had no idea how actuall}^ poor 
they were at this time. And, really, if the Brothers 
then lacked, as they sometimes did, the necessities 
almost of life, the fault was not that of the generous 
Catholics of Montreal, but rather of Brother Euse- 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 1 43 

bius and his associates who failed to make their needs 
known. The result was that Monsieur Berthelet, 
whose generosity was in keeping with his faith and 
love of his holy religion, at once came to the Brothers' 
aid, and so generously did he assist them that the 
financial condition of the Montreal establishment was 
then solidified for the future. This princely ben- 
efactor built, upon a spacious site, also his gift, a 
fine and commodius establishment for the Montreal 
community, and while he lived, he insisted upon 
supplying the Brothers with all they needed in the 
way of food, clothing, etc. He was determined 
that they should not be reduced again to the neces- 
sity of beginning their day's work upon an inadequate 
breakfast, or be exposed to the humiliation of not 
having a good morning meal to set before honored 
guests. M. Berthelet was justly regarded by the 
Montreal Brothers as their father — as a matter of 
fact, they always addressed him as Pere Berthelet 
— and his benefactions to the Montreal Brother- 
hood, taken all together, amounted to no less a sum 
than $100,000. Nor was the good Pere Berthelet 
the only one of his family to whom the Brotherhood 
of Charity is a large debtor. It was his excellent 
sister who gave the site, at Longue Pointe, on the 
St. Lawrence, of the magnificent institute which the 
Brothers now have there for the care of insane 
patients. His good son-in-law, M. Larveque, added 
to the establishment built by Pere Berthelet the 



144 JLIFK OF FATHER HASKINS. 

splendid chapel which is now to be seen there, and this 
chapel represents an outlay of $28,000. Another 
relative, or friend of his, M. Chevrier, gave addi- 
tional land. And all these magnificent gifts 
may be said to have been a recompense, inspired 
by God, for the spirit of uncomplaining poverty, 
patient resignation and trustful confidence which 
Brother Eusebius, when provincial, inculcated, by 
example, far more eloquently than by words, upon 
the members of the Montreal community. In ad- 
dition to all other benefits which Brother Eusebius 
conferred upon . the House of the Angel Guardian 
during his administration, mention should be made 
of the great advantages which came to it from his 
skilful financering of its revenues. By economy and 
prudence he cancelled the entire mortgage ^debt 
which then rested on the establishment, and when, 
in 1884, he was bidden to go to Detroit and assume 
charge of an orphanage there, he left a surplusage in 
the treasury of $5,600, which enabled his successor. 
Brother Joseph, to begin the erection of the present 
•commodious and finely-equipped school building. 
This building, which contains five splendid school 
rooms, with two other roomy ones for play, and St. 
Joseph's Hall, cost to erect $30,000, and the name 
of Brother Joseph is indelibly associated with it. 
Brother Joseph's term ran to his death in 1889; and 
then the management of the House of the Angel 
Guardian passed into the hands of the present 




BROTHER JUDE, Superior. 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 1 45 

worthy, energetic and very capable superior, the 
Rev. Brother Jude, to whom is largely due the credit 
of its splendid present usefulness, its excellent con- 
dition, and its future large promise. 

Brother Jude possessed especial qualifications for 
the place which he has so acceptably and success- 
fully filled for the past ten years. In addition to 
his natural abilities, he has the advantage of know- 
ing thoroughly every detail of the management of 
the institution of which he is now the head. Before 
becoming superior he had filled every other office 
in the House of the Angel Guardian. He knew 
every in and out of the institution, consequently, 
when he was called upon to take the reins of govern- 
ment, he was fully aware of what each department 
was doing, and he understood what was lacking to 
make the departments larger successes. He had 
shown his ability to manage matters by the admir- 
able discipline which, by firm, yet gentle ways, he 
had instilled among the boys. He appreciated fully 
all that his predecessors in the superior's office had 
done, for the home. He realized the obstacles with 
which they had to contend and over many of which 
they had triumphed. At the same time he knew 
that the House of the Angel Guardian was capable 
of doing much more for its inmates than it had so 
far done, and he was determined that if zeal and 
pluck and hard work could irjcrease its usefulness. 



146 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

that result would be attained. Father Haskins, 
in his day, thought rather poorly of industrial 
schools. You can find his views upon that subject 
stated very forcibly in some of his annual reports. 
But with all deference to his opinions, one cannot 
avoid the conclusion that on this subject the good 
founder was mistaken. Things have changed a 
great deal since his day, and were he to return to 
the House of the Angel Guardian to-day and see 
the grand good work which is being done in the In- 
dustrial School which Brother Jude has estabhshed 
at the institution, he would be eager to recall his 
former opinions, and ready to admit that a well 
managed Industrial School is one of the very best 
adjuncts which such an institution as the House of 
the Angel Guardian could possibly possess. 

Brother Jude had the clear sight to recognize the 
advantages of such an institution as an Industrial 
School even before he succeeded Brother Joseph as 
Superior ; and when he found himself at the head of 
the House of the Angel Guardian, one of his first 
acts was to prepare for the inauguration of such a 
school. He did not consider that the House of the 
Angel Guardian was doing its full duty toward its 
inmates by giving them a Christian and secular 
education simpl}^, saving them from evil associations, 
correcting any bad inclinations they might have, 
strengthening their good features, etc. He believed 
that it should equip them to earn their livelihood in 



LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 147 

the world, after they quitted the institution's shelter- 
ing walls. In a word, he believed in practical 
education, in thorough education, an education which 
trained the heart, the mind and the hand, and which 
thus developes the whole boy. He knew that a lad 
sent out into the world with no means of earning his 
living, no matter how carefully trained he had been 
in his faith or the practices of his religion, would be 
beset by many dangers and temptations. He wanted 
to see each lad that left the House of the Angel 
Guardian, after spending years therein, enter the 
world equipped to fill a useful place in society, 
capable of taking an honorable place among the 
workers and wage-earners ; and knew that the best, 
if not the only way, to effect that result was to 
start an Industrial School and thoroughly teach the 
boys useful trades and callings. And conviction 
with Brother Jude always means action. He had 
no funds at his disposal to start his Industrial School ; 
but he had unwavering confidence in God's provi- 
dence and a reliance that the friends of the 
institution and its inmates would come to his 
support as soon as they saw the character of the im- 
provements which he contemplated. Nor was he 
mistaken. He submitted his plans to the Board of 
Trustees. They approved of them unhesitatingly, but 
advised the superior, who had planned an extensive 
School of Industry — and it may be added here that 
Brother Jude still sticks to his original ideas, has car- 



148 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

ried out more than one of them, and will, if his life be 
spared and his administration prolonged, yet execute 
them all — to go slowly, and start one industry at a 
time. The present structure on Ruggles Street was 
then built first ; later on the book bindery and several 
other departments were started in a building adjoining 
the school structure which Brother Joseph erected. 
All this necessitated an outlay of $25',ooo; and how 
ably and skilfully the reverend superior has man- 
aged the finances of the House of the Angel Guardian 
may be inferred from the fact that during his admin- 
istration he has paid off all the debt on the school 
building, the original cost of which was $30,000, 
expended $25,000 in the construction of the building 
now devoted to the industrial departments, equipped 
them with the several machines, implements, and 
other paraphernalia required for their running, met 
all other outlays, and reduced the entire indebted- 
ness of the institution to $34,000, a sum which can 
be easil}^ handled, but which Brother Jude is very 
desirous of seeing paid off as speedily as possible, 
because tractable though the present indebtedness 
is, while it remains it prevents or delays the under- 
taking of certain promising projects which Brother 
Jude has in contemplation. 

Let no one imagine that the Industrial School of 
the House of the Angel Guardian is an amateur 
affair. It is a trade school in the fullest and com- 
pletest sense of the term. Its graduates are filling 




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LIFE OF FATHER HASKINe5. 149 

honorable places in several of our cities. Out of its 
printing plant have gone youths, experts in their 
trade, who are now earning good wages in printing 
offices in Boston, Worcester, Providence, Hartford, 
Portland, New York, Chicago, Haverhill, Augusta 
and many other places throughout the country; and 
the same statement holds relatively good of the other 
industrial departments. When Brother Jude de- 
termined to start an Industrial School, he was 
resolved that it should be a thorough, practical and, 
as far as he could make it, a successful school. He 
planned and executed accordingly. He secured 
competent instructors for the various departments, 
artisans who knew their trades and were capable of 
teaching them to others. He supplied his school 
with the latest and best machinery. He saw to it 
that there was plenty of work for each department 
to do, that orders came in, that a demand for the 
products of his boys' labor, skill and industry was 
created and maintained. It required brains, fore- 
sight, intelligence and hard work to accomplish all 
this. But Brother Jude has done it, is still doing 
it more and more successfully every day ; and the 
Industrial School of the House of the Angel Guar- 
dian, in consequence, has not only come to stay, but 
its merits, its usefulness, and its good results are rec- 
ognized now by all who know of its existence and 
wide-spread operations. So successful has the 
school, in fact, proven, that Brother Jude, who, from 



150 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

the outset, wisely instituted a system of paying the 
boys for their services, now manages to give them, 
even while learning their trade, enough to keep 
them in pocket money. This plan stimulates the 
ambition of the lads, makes them do better w^ork, 
and when their trades are learned, they draw a reg- 
ularly weekly salary — generally after their first year 
in the Industrial School. Then, too, the boys are 
taught habits of thrift. They are encouraged to put 
as much of their wages as they can into the bank 
for future contingencies ; and some of the lads can 
show very respectable sums on deposit to their 
credit. 

It is needless to say that Brother Jude is proud— 
as he has every right to be — of his Industrial School. 
He planned the school, and despite all obstacles 
he went forward with his plans until he saw them 
sanctioned by the Board of Trustees and put into 
successful operation. God has blessed his pluck 
and his perseverance, and heaven has rewarded his 
untiring labors and sacrifices. One who visits the 
school and marks the splendid, thorough way in 
which every department does its work must wish 
that the good founder of the House of the Angel 
Guardian might be permitted to return to his beloved 
institution and see what wonders Brother Jude and 
his associates are accomplishing there. There are 
few, if indeed there be any, larger, better managed 
or more successful industrial schools, in the whole land 




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LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 151 

than this one of the House of the Angel Guardian. 
In the composing room of the printing establishment 
are employed thirty boys, with an average of seven- 
teen men, who act as instructors, and three proof 
readers. The job pressroom requires the services 
of a foreman, who has eight boys under him. In 
the pressroom are employed a foreman, an assistant 
foreman, and ten boys, and in the book bindery 
there is a foreman with an assistant, and twenty- 
three boys at work. In the other shops there are 
seventy-one lads at work at different occupations, 
and on a few days in each week all the boys who 
are not regularly employed in the several shops, do 
light work, such as folding papers, insertingcirculars, 
etc., outside of school hours. Since its foundation 
the House of the Angel Guardian has sheltered, 
cared for and instructed 10,883 boys. On June ist 
of this year it had 307 boys in its care. From its 
printing office issues TJic Weekly Bouquet, an illus- 
trated paper which, not infrequently, gives its readers 
twenty or twenty-four pages of interesting and in- 
structive reading, and which is now in its elev^enth 
volume, an assured financial success, and admittedly 
the best paper of its class in the United States. 
From the same office, too, we haxe The Orf hail's 
pj'iemU a handsome quarterly, the first number of 
which appeared in July, 1884; V Ami de rOrphelin, 
printed in French, the initial number of which was 
issued in June, 1887. The Angel Guardian Press, 



152 LIFE OF FATHER HASKINS. 

though still a comparatively young institution, has 
given the Catholic reading public some excellent 
works, excellent not alone because of the entertain- 
ing, uplifting and enlightening literature with which 
those books supplied them, but also for the reason 
that the books themselves are finely printed and 
bound ; and what is not the least consideration, are 
offered for sale at very reasonable prices. 

Such then is the House of the Angel Guardian as it 
stands to-day. Such is the grand and great good 
work which the institution which Father Haskins 
founded is now doing. It has not yet reached the 
fulness of its powers and its usefulness. It is cap- 
able of accomplishing, and, with God's help, it will 
yet accomplish far more than the splendid work 
which it is now performing. Father Haskins' name 
is indelibly written all over the House of the Angel 
Guardian. His memory will ever be treasured and 
honored there. Could he return to the institution of 
his love to-day, to see what it is doing, what it has 
done, and what it is now capable of accomplishing, 
we believe that his one request to the friends of the 
institution would be to pay off the indebtedness on 
the home, tractable though that may be, in order 
that Brother Jude might be free to go ahead with the 
plans which he holds still in abeyance for the larger, 
wider and deeper usefulness and influence of the 
House of the Angel Guardian. 




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The Orphans Friend 

For the Society of the angel Guardian. 



This is a Quarterly Family Paper, Published with the 
Approbation of the 

MOST REVEREND JOHN J. WILLIAMS, 

ARCHBISHOP OF BOSTON. 



For the exclusive benefit of the orphans and 
destitute or abandoned children in thetlouse of 
the Angel Guardian. In the thirteenth year of its 
existence, it is now a resource only second in 
importance lo the Society of thu Angkl 
Guardian. Without it the House could but 
inadequately meet its demands. Aconstantand 
unremitting etlort has bt-en made to render it a 
p iper that can be read with benefit in Catholic 
homes. Itsconients are almost wholly original, 
the contributors including some of our best 
Catholic writers. It is printed in our Industrial 
School by the boys of the House. 

Subscribers, at the same time that they are 
procuring a first-rate paper for home reading, 
have also the satisfaction of know ing that their 
subscriptions aid the noble charity tor which the 
House was founded, and entitle ihem to all the 
privileges of membership in the Society of the 
Angel Guardian. 

The annual subscription is only 25 cents. 
With the receipt therefor a yearly card of member- 
ship in the Society is also sent when requested. 

All persons sending a club of forty subscribers 



at above rates, are registered Life-members of 
the Society, and receive in addition a desirable 
premium. 

Collectors helping to extend the circulation of 
The Orphan^s Friend can have the paper sent 
direct by mail to club subscribers as well as to 
individual subscribers. 

The Orphan's Friend is also published in the 
French language. Any of our readers desiring 
the French copy w^ill please apply to the House 
of the Angel Guardian. 

When writing, name Town, County, and 
State. Subscriptions should be sent by Post- 
office or Registered Letter to insure safe arrival. 

Address, 

BROTHER JUDE, Treasurer, 

85 Vernon Street, Boston, Mass. 



^ 



The Weekly "bouquet. 

A Charming, Instructive, and Entertaining Catholic Story 
Paper. 

PUBLISHED BY THE 

BROTHERS OF CHARITY, 

House of the Angel Guardian, 85 Vernon St , 
Boston, Mass. 



The public is no doubt already acquainted 
with cur Catholic publication, tilled the Weekly 
Bouquet. But, in order to advance its circula- 
tion, we ask you to kindly give this matter your 
attention ; and after learning the object of the 
journal, we earnestly ask your co-operation in 
its advancement. 

The Weekly Bouqutt was established by 
Brother Jude, Supeno' of the House of the An- 
gel Guardian, with the view of giving the boys 
of the Institution an opportunity to learn the 
printing trade. God has blessed the work. 
During the past year the journal has met with 
success. But we feel that were its merits, as a 
Catholic story paper, more widely known, the 
success would be much greater, and the proceeds 
increased, in a way, to help the Brothers advance 
their great work in the cause of orphanage. 

Our children and young people must read 
something : and if not supplied with good whole- 
some reading, they will patronize the trashy 
novels and journals to be had at all our book- 
stalls. Unless something is done to prevent the 
reading of this vile literature by our young 



peoplo, it will go on increasing in volume and 
repulsiveness until it is violently done away 
with by some decree of the Almighty, enforced 
in an effectual manner by bold and fearless re- 
formers. 

There can be no healthy or reliable literature 
which has not for its object to elevate and en- 
noble the mind of youth, and lead all who read 
it to become good Christians and upright citi- 
zens. We shall do the utmost in our power to 
bring about this good result. 

This being the well understood position which 
we sincerely have taken, determined to adhere to 
it in the face of all discouragements, it remains 
with the people whether or not our journal 
will be the great success we hope, it to be. 
We need a large financial backing to enable us 
to do pleasantly the great and good work we are 
ambitious to do, namely, the planting of virtue 
and goodness in all hearts, and the advancement 
of knowledge in the young. We intend to do 
this in a spirit of peacefulness and confidence, 
rather than in those ways which lead only to 
discord, wretchedness and ruin. 

Send us your name and address, or the name 
and address of any friend whom you wish to re- 
ceive a specimen copy of the Weekly Bouquet. 

RATES. — Single copies, 5 cents; subscription 
for one year, $1.25. Special terms to Pastors, 
Teachers, Agents, School Clubs, and Societies. 



M 



IS 1900 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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